Plenary Lecture
Educational Potential in the new Input Devices
Professor Hung-Jen Yang
National Kaohsiung Normal University
Taiwan
E-mail: hungjen.yang@gmail.com
Abstract: Innovative input devices are providing revolution in the making a brand new type of interaction with computers. All those new devices own significant potential to support education. The future input devices would be addressed and educational functions would be illustrated. Practically, gesture control would be focused and demonstrated. Educational potential would be organized according to both learning subjects/activities and communicating with computers. The primary task of human-computer interaction is to carry information between the user and the silicon world of the computer. Educators even take the opportunity of users’ purposeful behavior and information responded from computer for users to recognize and enhance users’ learning. Progress in this area attempts to increase the useful bandwidth across that interface by seeking faster, more natural, and more convenient means for users to transmit information to computers, as well as efficient, salient, and pleasant mechanisms to provide feedback to the user. On the user’s side of the communication channel, interaction is controlled by the nature of human attention, cognition, and perceptual-motor skills and abilities; on the computer side, it is controlled only by the technologies and methods that we can invent. Research in input and output is centered on the two ends of this channel. First, the devices and techniques computers can use for communicating with people. Second, the perceptual abilities, processes, and organs people can use for communicating with computers. It then attempts to find the common ground through which the two can be related by studying new modes of communication that could be used for human-computer interaction (HCI) and developing devices and techniques to use such modes. Basic research seeks theories and principles that inform us of the parameters of human cognitive and perceptual facilities, as well as models that can predict or interpret user performance in computing tasks. Advances can be driven by the need for new modalities to support the unique requirements of specific application domains, by technological breakthroughs that HCI researchers attempt to apply to improving or extending the capabilities of interfaces, or by theoretical insights suggested by studies of human abilities and behaviors, or even problems uncovered during careful analyses of existing interfaces. These approaches complement one another, and all have their value and contributions to the field.
Brief Biography of the Speaker: Prof. Dr. Hung-Jen Yang got master of industrial technology from University of North Dakota USA in 1989 and Ph.D. of Industrial education and technology from the Iowa State University, USA in 1991. From 1991 to 1994, he worked as an associate professor in Ping-Tong University of Education and was in charge of computer center to promote computer assist instruction and internet-working service. After 1994, he is working for the department of industrial technology education in the National Kaohsiung Normal University. National Science Council in Taiwan had contracted with Dr. Yang for more than twenty research projects in last twenty years. He also supports Ministry of Education by creating information system of teacher in-service education. Technology education and teacher education are two major educational research areas focused by Dr. Yang. Other than educational research, he is also involved deeply with topics of knowledge engineering, communication technology, electronic engineering, and automation technology.