Paper++ aims to preserve, respect, and enhance the
properties of paper, providing a potentially cheap solution for linking
paper-based texts with multi-media materials. Therefore, we will
principally focus on maintaining a paper substrate whilst using special inks
that are transparent and can be detected with a special sensing device (a
wand). Paper++ will take as its main focus the use of
paper in teaching and education, so
we will be concerned with developing support for three application areas:
children’s books, materials for students and more general educational documents
(e.g. brochures and guides). The book is a good example of a particularly
resilient paper-based artifact that supports an interactivity with readers
where text can be easily marked up, pages flipped, and materials quickly
navigated. We will investigate the ways in which conventional books could be
enriched so that they can provide different forms of interactivity and can be
used in a variety of ways with other electronic materials. At its simplest,
this might mean that a child reads a book but uses a wand to call up sounds
associated with a particular image or word. Alternatively, a student reading a
textbook might use the wand to retrieve related audio-video materials, articles
or interactive demonstrations. The new functionality that emerges should not
only enable ways of robustly linking existing educational texts to electronic
resources, but should also provide the opportunity for novel ways of designing paper-based materials to
reflect this new use. As well as undertaking studies with potential users,
therefore, we will address the implications of enhancing paper for so called
‘content’ providers such as publishers, broadcasters and teachers. |
