You are here: Home / Archives for Dr. Pamela Rutledge

Augmented Reality on the Big(ger) Screen

August 27, 2010 By Dr. Pamela Rutledge Leave a Comment
No Gravatar

iPad 4.0?  I’m ready now!  Gary Hayes sent me the link to his video on YouTube illustrating the augmented reality (AR) experience would be on an iPad-sized screen. It is a great video; it really captures a sense of the potential of AR across a gamut of applications.  After you check out the video, go to Gary’s website and read the blog entry  “Where Industry and Academia Fear to Tread – StoryLabs Launch” on the need for storytelling in effective message construction and delivery–and the conundrum of finding someone who knows how to speak “transmedia.”  As someone who teaches digital storytelling and emerging technologies, it was exciting to see his take on it.  The world is no longer linear.  Well, it never was, but before it moved slow enough so our inability to see it wasn’t such a problem.  Now, it is.  And we have to learn to be nonlinear, multidimensional storytellers.  To do this, we need to become nonlinear thinkers.  This isn’t just about storytelling.  Storytelling is creating a narrative which functions as a cognitive map or model that organizes information so that it has meaning–whether it’s emotional, functional or inspirational.  The ability to construct narrative across media means we have to let go of the need to have a story arc start and finish all in the same place.  This takes cognitive flexibility and it is especially critical if we want to nurture innovation and creativity.  The world is changing too rapidly and is too complex  to keep up without being able to think and communicate in new and exciting ways.  There are few better exercises to limber up your synapses than learning to create transmedia narratives.

Filed Under: Augmented Reality, Education Tagged With: , , ,

Who Wants More Reality?

August 26, 2010 By Dr. Pamela Rutledge 2 Comments
No Gravatar
Kids with augmented reality planets

Kids with augmented reality planets

Previously published on Psychology Today.com “Positively Media”
———-

Sometimes when new technology is introduced, you get a glimpse of the future. The iPad was like that for me. Now Samsung is introducing the Galaxy Tab (tablet) on September 2. This time, the glimpse of the future comes from their marketing pitch not their product. The top item the Galaxy Tab offers those who want “more”? Augmented reality.

Samsung’s Galaxy is an interesting and slick entrant in the tablet field. Size-wise, it’s halfway between the size of a cell phone and an iPad with a screen big enough to see things without squinting. (I’ve heard the iPad called an iPhone for old people.) Personally, I really didn’t expect to like the iPad as much as I do, but I carry it everywhere. It’s pretty hard to be an Apple-killer these days, but Samsung got a couple of things right that Apple missed in the first generation: the camera/video function.

It is those added features that drive the sales pitch of the Galaxy Tab teaser promo video. However, the promo is more revealing about the changing media technology landscape than the attributes of the tablet. When the video asks the consumer “Need More?” It offers up augmented reality ahead of video calls and full web browsing.


Augmented reality bridges the Internet with the real world as a functional reality. It takes the information you can find on the Internet—from directions and prices to history—and superimposes it onto reality.

NFL uses augmented reality to mark the down lines

Terminator vision: Augmented Reality

Terminator vision is augmented reality

If you’ve seen the digital down lines on a football field, or Terminator vision, then you’ve seen applications of augmented reality. Augmented reality not only merges the information from the Internet with the real world, but it allows you to access information when and where you need it. And it does this for you while you are out in the real world. All this magic comes from easy to use, free software and a camera-equipped mobile phone with Internet access. Get restaurant reviews or comparison shop just by pointing your phone. Identify a plant, see what a London street corner looked like in 1890, find out when a building was built of if there is an office for rent. This is a tiny tip of the iceberg of how we will be able to think about communications in the not-so-distant future.

Augmented Reality: Local Directory Service

Augmented reality is better than a local director service

Augmented reality will be as disruptive a technology as Web 2.0 because it takes user-control of information and personal experience with technology to a whole new level. It makes information geographically and time relevant while access is totally geographically and time irrelevant.

By layering text, audio, video and images over reality, augmented reality enhances our understanding of how things work. It’s like getting to be a perpetual 2 year old, asking ‘what’s that?’ For some cool examples of using augmented reality like a time machine: see London’s Street Museum and History Pin.

Unlike other types of technology, augmented reality transforms the environment into an immersive learning ecology (even if you aren’t trying to learn something.) Creating an immersive environment has many advantages. In embodied cognition terms, we have many ways of manipulating the environment to help us think. Augmented reality allows us to off-load cognitive work onto the environment in all new ways. That leaves all kinds of brain ergs available for something more useful: synthesizing information, problem solving, reasoning, and planning. At a time when people are worrying about information overload, augmented reality is the ultimate filter. It will not show you the price of a latte in Tallahassee if you are in NYC. You are in charge. Your information is targeted, self-selected and self-relevant. Augmented reality is working through what

I think of as the “shiny penny” stage, full of exciting new-kid-on-the-block bells and whistles. Unless finding the closest Starbucks is a critical issue for you, it hasn’t been used much in prosocial or substantive ways, but that will come soon. (See, for example, Imagined Communities. ) The potential for environmental exploration and learning is extraordinary. Physical objects are often used in education: they convey meaning, relationships, provide opportunities for collaboration, and focus attention.

Vito Technology’s Star Walk

Vito Technology’s Star Walk

Augmented reality is powerful because it extends our ability to use the power of technology in our own environment. We can use it in a way that is not separate from the interpersonal communication space unlike many other technologies.Augmented reality is not separate from place. It is place. Place matters because it turns out that that most real-world thinking actually occurs in the real world. Not only that, but it happens in specific and complex environments with practical goals that relies on the interaction with, feedback from, and manipulation of real stuff.

—

Photos of of kids and StarWalk iPhone app from Gizmodo

Enhanced by Zemanta
Filed Under: Augmented Reality, Education Tagged With: , ,

Research Survey Launched: Social Media and Influence of Photos on Body Image

August 4, 2010 By Dr. Pamela Rutledge 2 Comments
No Gravatar

Social media has changed how people get information and communicate in many ways. We are not just consumers of media. With social media and new technology and tools, we also can easily make, change, and share media.

There are images everywhere generated by commercial activity and a wealth of research looking at the impact of mass media on body image of men and women.  Since the advent of social media, however, we now have access to a wealth of images that are predominantly not professionally produced.  There are over 2 billion YouTube videos, 500 million Facebook profile photos, and 70 million LinkedIn profiles and that doesn’t include the images you see on Twitter, Flickr, and a host of other social network sites.

One of the tenets of social media is that you can’t control your message, you can only participate in the conversation.  Has the flood of “real” images from social media influenced the conversation about body image and what we view as social norms?  Help us find out.

This study looks at the influence of the many media images on how people see and present themselves. Please participate!
Click here to take the Social Media Survey

Filed Under: Cognition, Social Media & Networks Tagged With: , , ,

Vote with Your Eyeballs for Positive Media Content

July 26, 2010 By Dr. Pamela Rutledge Leave a Comment
No Gravatar

Prosocial Augmented Reality: Celebrating Youth Achievement

Where you look matters.  Media producers count eyeballs and show you what you will watch.  Let’s celebrate achievement, such as the fifth grade chorus from Staten Island, instead of spending our time and money consuming media about outliers, like LeBron James’ basketball contract, or irresponsibility and bad behavior, like Lindsay Lohan’s substance problems and jail sentence. It’s time we started exercising our power through viewing choice and putting the powers of emerging media technologies to work promoting the behaviors we want to see in the media for our kids to emulate–not those we can’t help but see or wish we hadn’t.

Let’s use the excitement and engagement of emerging technologies—such as augmented reality—for prosocial ends.

We are long overdue to take some responsibility for the media content we choose to support. Let your eyeballs, remotes and wallets do the talking instead of your mouth. Media has to potential to create images for aspiration and inspiration, not in looks, but in substance. We can choose to support media technologies that affirm what we want to be as individuals and as a society, instead of looking for others to blame for what “media does to us.” Believe me, media outlets pay lots of attention to how you cast your eyeballs.

The August issue of Time Out New York Kids is a perfect example. It celebrates the achievements of the Webby-Award-winning fifth grade chorus from Staten Island with an augmented reality enhancement. By viewing the magazine cover with a mobile device, such as an iPhone or a Droid with Internet access, and the freely downloadable Junaio augmented reality mobile phone app, you can experience a jubilant performance clip of the chorus on video.

This is much more important news to discuss and celebrate than LeBron James’ NBA team choice. LeBron is a great example of hardwork, but the probability of having the right opportunity, work ethic, and genetic talent to achieve at his level is about .01%. That’s not 1%–it’s 100 times LESS than that, or 1 out of 10,000.

Yet, according to a 2008 study of urban youths ages 13-18, 70% planned on careers in the NBA. No big surprise that’s an attractive dream. For the 2009-2010 season, the minimum salary was $457,588 and the average salary was $3.4 million. Each year, 50,000 African American boys play high school basketball, but less than 50 will make the NBA. To put it in perspective, the average NBA basketball arena has approximately 20,000 seats, so imagine that all the seats are filled with basketball players that showed up to play, but they only let 1 player at every OTHER game onto the floor–and he may not even get to start. All the rest get to go home, many unprepared to take advantage of other career opportunities. Celebrating other achievements, such as the P.S. 22 Chorus, emphasizes opportunities that can be available to all kids. Participation is this kind of activity not only teaches about the activity–music, singing, beat, and teamwork in this case– but it demonstrates much more valuable lessons:

  1. learning takes time
  2. it is cumulative
  3. it is about effort not luck
  4. hard work is rewarding
  5. working as a team feels good

Research by shows that when we believe that our abilities can change with efforts, we try harder, and that when we have confidence in ourselves, and believe in our ability to act on our own behalf, we are more resilient and take more risks. Today’s youth are facing a world where change is the rule rather than the exception. They need much more than the ability to read, write and do simple math. They need the emotional resilience and cognitive flexibility to adapt to a changing environment and meet it as a challenge not an obstacle. It’s great that LeBron James has had such success and I’m happy for him, but the kids at PS 22 make much better role models.

—

Photo by AWE Photo/Jan Somm-Hammel. Retrieved from http://www.silive.com/entertainment/music/index.ssf/2009/09/ps_22_chorus_scores_30000_from.html

Enhanced by Zemanta
Filed Under: Augmented Reality, Culture & Society, Positive Psychology Tagged With: , , , ,

How Media Psychology Contributes to Ergonomics

July 22, 2010 By Dr. Pamela Rutledge 1 Comment
No Gravatar

I received the following thoughtful question:

Human factors are investigated under the scientific discipline called Ergonomics for comprehending human cognition, or the brain system, in order to design information systems within human factor limitations.  How are ergonomics and media psychology related?

Human physiology and cognition are obviously central issues to ergonomics and they take into account human development across the lifespan from that perspective. Media psychology also looks at the experiential aspects of human interaction with objects and environments across the lifespan. It extends the usability to the perceptions of self and self-reflection, such as, identity, self-efficacy (competence), engagement and flow (in contrast to attention), persuasion, qualitative perceptions of aesthetics, and attribution or the meaning we give to our interactions.  For example:

  1. Did this experience make me feel competent or incompetent?
  2. Did I feel able to make a good decision as a decision-maker?
  3. Did I feel engaged at an appropriate level–not to hard or too easy–so that I feel effective and energized?
  4. Was the lay-out or design aesthetically pleasing contributing to my overall mood?
  5. How do I feel about using technology?  What do I think is the ‘normal’ way of doing this action?
  6. Do I trust the experience or information?

Since humans often attribute actions of others and situational context as reflecting back on themselves, these are important considerations that impact not just whether a person is able to use something, but if they will use it or be productive and effective using it.   Media psychology will look how the physical usability impacts these types of experiences, drawing on positive psychology, social cognition, learning theory, multiple intelligences, individual strengths,  developmental psychology, and cognitive mapping and schemas in addition to the cognitive and biological issues that ergonomics address.

Filed Under: Cognition, Positive Psychology Tagged With: ,
« Older Posts

Copyright © · Media Psychology Research Center · on WordPress ·