Section: Dissemination

Popularization

• Members of the team participate on a regular basis, to scientific awareness and mediation actions:

  • Several team members participated to the "Fête de la Science 2012"

  • Gilles Simon chaired a "Café Scientifique" in Nancy on the subject of augmented reality.

  • Erwan Kerrien was an associate researcher to a MATh.en.JEANS workshop, and is a member of the local Scientific Mediation Committee.

• A transdisciplinarity project has been initiated with the IUFM de Lorraine (teacher training institute), in order to assess the relevance of using augmented reality in learning astronomy at primary school. A tangible user interface has been built to allow investigation of astronomical phenomena such as the periodical renewal of the seasons, the phases of the moon, or the regular succession of day and night. The interface has been experienced in two classrooms of 20 and 19 8-year-old and 10-year-old children and compared with traditional physical and virtual models. The questions that were investigated were: is the interface approachable enough to be used by children? Does it facilitate comprehension and learning of the phenomena by direct experience? Does it facilitate children concentration? Preliminary results tend to prove that the AR model allows a better conceptualization and favors learning for younger children. This work will be continued and may lead to one or several academic papers in the education field.

• We have designed and developed a software whose aim is to support students with learning computer programming. This software, named artEoz, enables a pedagogical view of the computer memory, dynamically changing while the user program is running. Using a nice visualization helps to understand the behavior on an object oriented program. This software concerns beginners as well experimented students thanks to its facilities to draw complex data structures. This software is licensed by the APP (French agency for software protection).