Towards an Integrated Hardware And SOftware Book (HASOB)

Abstract

Towards an integrated Hardware And SOftware Book (HASOB)The first complete concept of a tablet computer was the DynaBook, The DynaBook was conceptualized by Alan Kay in the late 1960s and early 1970s [1] as the first tablet computer.The ideas, underlying the software of the DynaBook, are based on insights from psychology study on how children learn and develop. The technology however was lagging behind for wide use of tablet computers in education. This has changed drastically in recent days with tablets entering strongly into education. One application that has been widely used in the education process is the Classroom Presenter by Microsoft and the University of Washington. An experiment was conducted at Virginia Tech University to use the tablets with software programs focused on tasks to increase interactive learning with great feedback from students. At Linköping University an experiment was conducted to use the notebook as tool for learning programming languages, the pre-installed software “open modelica” was the base environment that can help student learn programming language while studying the scientific phenomena. While open modelica is a language of its own, the approach itself can be applied in learning any programming language.The current paper describes a new concept of an integrated Hardware And SOftware Book(HASOB). The proposed HASOB platform aims at increasing subconscious or habit learning to supplement declarative learning [2, 3] through the addition of hardware capabilities to electronic books that run on Tablet PCs. HASOB would integrate traditional text book information,hardware capabilities to collect external data relevant to the educational topic and software capabilities to provide simulations and analysis of the collected data. The proposed platform utilizes a tablet with enhanced capabilities through external hardware including data acquisition and sensors. HASOB could be thought of as a new format for educational books, especially scientific or engineering books that may require additional modalities to explain abstract concepts such as filters. Such concepts may be better taught through simulations and display and manipulations of data from an accompanying measuring hardware.The paper will further discuss relevant pedagogical models and issues related to the development of an early prototype of the HASOB concept with a focus on teaching programming of C-language. The embodiment of the idea utilizes an iPad tablet interfaced to an Arduino microcontroller acting as data acquisition system interface to external sensors. Although the idea has not been utilized in an actual classroom at this point, the paper intends to share the concept of HASOB and practical issues associated with the creation of the early prototype. HASOB Prototype User Interface References[1] Alan C. Kay, “A personal computer for Children of all Ages”, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center august 1972.[2] PsiTek, “Subconcious Programming for Maximum Results” CMG Archives, http://campbellmgold.com.[3] John A. Bargh, Ezequiel Morsella, “The Unconscious Mind”, Yale University.