Alistair D.N. Edwards – författare

Progress in Gestural Interaction contains papers presented at the first Gesture Workshop, which was designed to bring together researchers working on gesture-based interfaces and gestural interaction and to provide a forum for the presentation and exchange of ideas and research currently in progress. It encompassed all aspects of gestural interaction, including:- what are gestures?; appropriateness of gestures used in interfaces; interactional issues; suitable applications; sign-language recognition. Papers are presented from the UK, France, Germany, Italy, USA and Ireland to provide an international viewpoint and the book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of gestural interaction, human-computer interaction, multi-modal interfaces, automatic sign language interpretation and pattern recognition. It could also be a useful supplementary text for courses on multi-modal human-computer interaction.

This text is about the design and use of advanced multimedia interfaces for learning. Each chapter is concerned with some aspect of the theory or practice of multimedia interfaces and their use as tools to facilitate human learning. The chapters treat the issue from a wide variety of perspectives, including human-computer interaction, interface design, artificial intelligence, intelligent tutoring systems, psychology, education and music. Three points distinguish the book: it is specifically about the use of multiple media in educational contexts; it addresses the use of multiple media within human-computer interaction, not merely the use of computers to facilitate multimedia presentations; and it addresses the problems from a variety of theoretical and practical perspectives, not simply in a technology-driven, pragmatic manner. The book is based on papers presented at a NATO Advanced Research Workshop help in September 1989 as part of the NATO Science Committee six-year Programme on Advanced Educational Technology.

Progress in Gestural Interaction contains papers presented at the first Gesture Workshop, which was designed to bring together researchers working on gesture-based interfaces and gestural interaction and to provide a forum for the presentation and exchange of ideas and research currently in progress. It encompassed all aspects of gestural interaction, including:- what are gestures?; appropriateness of gestures used in interfaces; interactional issues; suitable applications; sign-language recognition. Papers are presented from the UK, France, Germany, Italy, USA and Ireland to provide an international viewpoint and the book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of gestural interaction, human-computer interaction, multi-modal interfaces, automatic sign language interpretation and pattern recognition. It could also be a useful supplementary text for courses on multi-modal human-computer interaction.

What the book is about This book is about the theory and practice of the use of multimedia, multimodal interfaces for leaming. Yet it is not about technology as such, at least in the sense that the authors do not subscribe to the idea that one should do something just because it is technologically possible. ''Multimedia'' has been adopted in some commercial quarters to mean little more than a computer with some form of audio ar (more usually) video attachment. This is a trend which ought to be resisted, as exemplified by the material in this book. Rather than merely using a new technology ''because it is there'', there is a need to examine how people leam and eommunicate, and to study diverse ways in which computers ean harness text, sounds, speech, images, moving pietures, gestures, touch, etc. , to promote effective human leaming. We need to identify which media, in whieh combinations, using what mappings of domain to representation, are appropriate far which educational purposes . . The word ''multimodal '' in the title underlies this perspective. The intention is to focus attention less on the technology and more on how to strueture different kinds of information via different sensory channels in order to yield the best possible quality of communication and educational interaction. (Though the reader should refer to Chapter 1 for a discussion of the use of the word ''multimodal'' . ) Historically there was little problem.