Session 5 Interactive Map

Please click to see my version of interactive map.

http://iln.cite.hku.hk/com/1374/users/ckcheung5/mymap.swf

Proposal for the final assignment

Karen Lee Sau Wah and I would like to prepare a flash learning object which explores the relationship between the graphs of y = f(x) and y = f(x + k), where f(x) is in the form of ax^2 + bx + c. As the transformation of the graphs of functions is a new topic in the 1999 Secondary Mathematics which can be found in the coming 334 senior secondary mathematics syllabus, we hope that we can prepare a learning object which can help students to visualize one of the transformation effects (i.e. translation) by changing certain parameter(s), such the values of a, b, c and k.

Difficulties anticipated at this moment:
1. How to make a slider
2. How to draw the gridlines in flash
3. How to draw the quadratic graph

My first Flash file

Please click to see my first Flash of sunrise.

http://iln.cite.hku.hk/com/1374/users/ckcheung5/sun.swf

Session 4

Technical skills are a key issue. If one is well-versed at different tools or software, one can find the best and most suitable one to do a task in the shortest time. However, good ideas are more important. One can come up with good ideas without any concern for technical skills. Good ideas can still be good ideas no matter which tools or software you employ to present them. Even powerpoint or paper pop-up can serve the purpose.

According to Mayer (2005), people can learn more deeply from words and pictures than from words alone. Although pictures and words are qualitatively different, they can complement each other. If the text and the pictures are designed carefully (taking into considerations of how human minds work and how human processes information, how the dual coding effect on one's learning), people can learn more deeply from words and pictures than from words alone.

As an editor of mathematics textbooks, I notice there are some changes in the number of words and illustrations in textbooks. Old textbooks were mainly printed in black and white, and full of words with fewer illustrations. At present, textbooks are much more colourful, shorter paragraphs with more illustrations in between. As a result, students would not be overwhelmed by wordy and dull text, and they become more comfortable to study illustrations which convey the information and knowledge that they need to learn. Therefore, I agree that students can learn more deeply from words and pictures. Some authors even suggest proofs without words in mathematics. An example can be found at the link http://www.math.hmc.edu/funfacts/ffiles/10001.1-4-8.shtml. This idea is great and students can have a chance to appreciate how mathematics ideas can be expressed without words. It seems that people have been using more illustrations to improve teaching and learning.

Learning from the task of raindrops

As I am not sophisticated with powerpoint, only plane presentation without any interactivity was used in the first two tasks (self introduction and atmosphere). But in the task of raindrops, my partner and I have agreed to try to employ some interactivity in the task. And I also know that there is a function in the powerpoint that can easily allow an object to fall so that we need not make a number of slides to present the same falling effect and this saves us a lot of time.

From the presentation of Ivan's and Theresa's group presentation, I notice that a question can be put at the very beginning to engage readers to interrogate before they can get the answers.

Some classmates have used Flash in this task. Overall speaking, Flash can create more interesting and attractive display. But I do not mean that powerpoint is inferior. Looking at Martin and Dorothy's group and Theresa's group presentation, they have used powepoint and the presentation has included some interactivity and easy to navigate.

One more point learnt from Martin and Dorothy's group is the mouseover effect in the powerpoint. Using this function can make the presentation more interesting and appealing. Besides using interactive buttons, the mouseover effect can enhance another kind of interactivity between readers and the visual display.

With the increase use and popularity of internet, I usually resort to internet to search information for most of the time for its convenience and fast response. Just remind by Daniel, I realize that although there are plenty of resources in the internet, whether the information is correct or not still needs validation. Looking up information in books in library can also be a possible way of checking the correctness. To evaluate web resources, I should compare authority, accuracy, objectivity, currency and coverage, etc. (http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/eval.html).

Raindrop

Prepared by Karen Lee Sau Wah and I.



http://iln.cite.hku.hk/com/1374/users/ckcheung5/raindrop.ppt

Reflection for atmosphere presentation

By comparing Martin and Dorothy's presentation with my group's, I come to the following remarks.



(Presentation from Martin and Dorothy's group at
http://iln.cite.hku.hk/com/1374/users/wclau/Atomsphere.ppt)


1. In their design, most of the text are hidden under mouseover so that the design would not be overloaded with too many text at the first glance to prevent the audience from reading, but necessary information are still provided according to the audience's instruction.

2. They remind me to include 'diagram not to scale' which my group have missed.

3. They used the 'bottom to top' format while my group used the 'right bottom corner to left upper corner' format. As a result, they have more space to present more detailed information than us, e.g. the reflection of heat in the troposphere.

By looking at some of the classmates' design, what I can do to improve in this task is that buttons and animations can be used to bring more fun to the presentations and make the display look more attractive. More importantly, the use of buttons enhances readers to choose and explore at their will in whatever sequence. The messages are shown when clicked on the buttons to help readers to direct from they are looking to focus to the text. As a result, the messages can be easily be addressed to the readers.

Information Visualization

The following are some of the points that attract my attention in the article 'Information Visualization' (Gershon, Eick & Card, 1998).

1. Information visualization enables users to reach decisions in a relatively short time.

Reflection: Visual explanations clearly can articulate the message to be conveyed and eliminate confusion. The result is better understanding, better communication, better decision making, and better results (Woodbury & Kaczmarek, 2003).

2. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Reflection: Effective visual displays allow me to get the information in the shortest time in the small space. They can also help overcome the barriers of different languages and cultures in conveying messages.

3. The disadvantages of using images include difficulty in representing information clearly, dependency of visual and information perception on memories, experiences, beliefs, and culture and difficulty in making effective use of color.

Reflection: As mentioned in previous blogging, proper use of color not only catch attention, but also can enhance legibility and readability.

4. Should understand when images are equivalent to words, when they are more appropriate to represent information than words, and when they are not.

Reflection: As I am not good at design, what I can do is to think more and compare and contrast different visual representation. Just as what has been done in the class, although we are not told any criteria for evaluating visual representation, the class has already summarized a few points in Daniel's blog by critical thinking and comparison, e.g. use of contrast color, bulleted and concise text.

5. People's visual literacy should be increased so that people will become more comfortable dealing with visuals and thus will get more information from them.

Reflection: We not only need information literacy, but also visual literacy that helps:
(i) Develop basic design skills, know when to represent information visually better than words, when to use what tools and when not to use.
(ii) Present information, communicate, collaborate and make decision via visual representation.
(iii) Understand guidelines, strategies and skills for information retrieval and critical evaluation of different visual representation.
(iv) Promote mutual understanding through visual representation among different cultures.
(v) Recognize the social and ethical issues relating to visual representation.

References:
Gershon, N., Eick, S.G., & Card, S. (1998). Information Visualization. Interactions, March, 9-15.

Woodbury, H. & Kaczmarek, P. (2003). Why Your Ideas Need Visual Explanation. Retrieved 7 March 2007 from http://www.dynamicdiagrams.com/all_pdfs/dD_visual_explanation.pdf

Session 3

In this seesion, the first thing I learn is that I have to make sure that the information conveyed is not misleading. As information can be searched via internet, I need to make sure that the information searched via internet in preparing the visual display is valid. To do so, I need to compare authority, accuracy, objectivity, currency and coverage, etc. (Lederer, n.d.; Beck, n.d.) in evaluating different web resources. To ensure the visual display is correct, I may also need to ask some experts (if any) or friends who have the relevant knowledge to double check the content for me.

Secondly, I should be careful of the unintended consequence or message brought forwards by the visual display, e.g. the audience may hold misconceptions after looking at the visual display.

Thirdly, in visual display, I not only convey the knowledge, but also communicate with each other, no matter how complicated or abstract the context is. I need to make sure that my visual explanation does not bring further confusion to the audience, but is accessible to non-technical people as well without obscuring the complex details that are of interest to specialists (Woodbury & Kaczmarek, 2003).

As I have mentioned in my previous blogging that I need to look from a different or new angle, I totally agree with Daniel that we must stop thinking about things that will limit our scope to accept innovation (the 13th comment in Daniel's blog about 'Text to Visual'). Now, one more point I want to add is that besides learning new things in this module, I also need to unlearn in order to open up and try new ways of expressing. Lack of technical skills should not be an excuse of repeating old ways of representation.

References:

Beck, S. E. (n.d.). The Good, the Bad & The Ugly, or, Why It's a Good Idea to Evaluate Web Sources. Retrieved 7 March 2007 from http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/eval.html

Lederer, N. (n.d.). How to Evaluate A Web Page. Retrieved 7 March 2007 from http://manta.library.colostate.edu/howto/evalweb2.html

Woodbury, H. & Kaczmarek, P. (2003). Why Your Ideas Need Visual Explanation. Retrieved 7 March 2007 from http://www.dynamicdiagrams.com/all_pdfs/dD_visual_explanation.pdf

Text to Visual

The image shows how a child interprets a given text and presents it visually. Through the activity, how well the child understands the text can be revealed. I just think mind maps employ similar idea of changing text to visual. A mind map is a diagram used to represent words, ideas, tasks or other items linked to and arranged radially around a central key word or idea, and to generate, visualize, structure and classify ideas (from Wikipedia). In the mind map, the teacher can look further into how a student groups the concepts and find out their misconceptions and weaknesses.

A difference between mind map and visual display is that in the former, people are easily guided by connecting lines to interpret the concepts, while in the latter, no specific paths have been provided, and it depends on how the audience perceive.

Reference:
Mind Map from Wikipedia. Retrieved 6 March 2007 from
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map

Task 1 of Session 2 (Squids)

I choose figure 2 mainly because it use many diagrams for visual comparison of the length, the weight and the habitat, etc. of the squids. This helps save a lot of words. The visual comparison can also impress the audience much more easily within a shorter time.

But after class discussion, there are other points worth to note for an effective visual display:
(1) Appropriate choice of colours to catch attention, e.g. it would be easy to read a text with black colour rather than yellow colour on a white sheet of paper (Gabriel-Petit, 2006).
(2) Short and bulleted points of writings to enhance easy reading.
(3) Choose the audience properly in order to convey the target information.
(4) Choice of graphics, illustrations, photos and artworks consistent with the title. e.g. For figure 4, to match with the word 'live' in the title, more photos are used to let the audience acquire a 'real' experience of reaching squids at a closer distance and give them a surprise.
(5) Effective arrangement of text and visual display so the audience can feel a sense of spatial comfortable in the overall layout and know the logic or sequence they need to follow.

Reference:
Gabriel-Petit, P. (2006). Applying Color Theory to Digital Displays. Retrieved 5 March 2007 from http://www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000163.php

Task 2 for Session 2

Prepared by Karen Lee Sau Wah and Jaco Cheung Chun Kay

(1) Summarized the content in a sheet of paper.

(2) Extracted useful information to prepare a pencil draft for our powerpoint.

(3) Prepared the powerpoint based on the pencil draft.

(4) After further discussion, we modified and enriched the content for our final presentation.

http://iln.cite.hku.hk/com/1374/users/ckcheung5/Task2_final.ppt