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The design of a new input device to help break the barriers mainly created by keyboard and mouse is discussed. The new design integrates digital pen and mouse technologies with a new industrial design to provide artist with natural pen and mouse based input interaction. The design enables the user to hold the input device in a more comfortable position and thus reduces repetitive strain injury, stress, discomfort, and fatigue. The design also enables the user to remain productive for longer periods without adding further physical injury.

The purpose, information architecture and some relevant design theory of IdeasAlive Design System are discussed. The methodology of the system and a detailed design guide to help teachers effectively use it in the classroom are outlined. The implementation strategies and techniques involved in translating the system into an interactive learning tool are also described. Case studies of the system is presented and the ability of the system to effectively teach and assist design in the classroom is assessed.

This research looks at the Hotel Yeoville (2010) public digital art project and offers an analysis towards understanding how through this creative intervention a public discourse can be inclusive of marginalised African immigrant groups living in South Africa. The marginal status of African immigrant groups in South Africa, is consistently similar in the digital arts field where there is no evident critique of the public art methods employed by art practitioners in engaging these marginalised groups. The agenda of Hotel Yeoville was particularly an attempt to counter the marginalising brutal and muted representations of these groups in mainstream media. In order for this creative intervention to effect such change, its public element needed to display a public vibrancy that was inclusive of the pluralistic opinions and voices of the African immigrant groups. However this public art project revealed paradoxes and complexities that are at the core of public art practise, and also highlighted the ambivalence of a strong creative product with an uncertain public‐ness.

Thesis (Ed. D.)--West Virginia University, 2009. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains vi, 101 p. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 83-89).

Thesis (M.F.A.)--West Virginia University, 2004. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains v, 35 p. : ill. (some col.). Vita. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 35).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1999. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 105-107). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis PlanB (M.S.)--University of Wisconsin--Stout, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references.

“We are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism; in short, we are cyborgs.” -- Donna Haraway, A Manifesto for Cyborgs As we stand beyond the brink of the 21st Century, we are outside of the boundaries where the Ivory Tower approach to education is applicable, particularly in regards to the teaching of practical knowledge and the acquisition of necessary technical skills. We must also, however, address the very real scalability issues inherit in the One Room Schoolhouse approach, as the numbers of students who need education are not likely to shrink anytime soon. We are no longer apes on the savannah and we can no longer afford to act as robotic vessels in search of knowledge from academia’s font of knowledge. Technology is the future of our society and it is only growing in complexity. If we are to efficiently instruct our students in the ever-growing fields of general study and technology they face, we need to find a hybrid, or cyborg, approach, melding the ape and the robot. / text

This thesis examines how blogging is being deployed to disrupt institutional hegemony in Malta. The island state is an example of a hyperlocal context that includes strong political, ecclesiastical and media institutions, advanced take-up of social technologies and a popular culture adjusting to the promise of modernity represented by EU membership. Popular discourse is dominated by political partisanship and advocacy journalism, with Malta being the only European country that permits political parties to directly own broadcasting stations. The primary evidence in this study is derived from an analysis of online texts during an organic crisis that eventually led to a national referendum to consider the introduction of divorce legislation in Malta. Using netnography supplemented by critical discourse analysis, the research identifies a set of strategies bloggers used to resist, challenge and disrupt the discourse of a hegemonic alliance that included the ruling political party, the Roman Catholic Church and their media. The empirical results indicate that blogging in Malta is contributing to the erosion of the Church’s hegemony. Subjects that were previously marginalised as alternative are increasingly finding an online outlet in blog posts, social media networks and commentary on newspaper portals. Nevertheless, a culture of social surveillance together with the natural barriers of size and the permeability of the social web facilitates the appropriation of blogging by political blocs, who remain vigilant to the opportunity of extending their influence in new media to disrupt horizontal networks of information exchange. Blogging is increasingly operating as a component of a hybrid media ecosystem that thrives on reflexive cycles of entertainment: the independent newspaper media, for long an active partner in the hegemonic set up in Malta, are being transformed and rendered more permeable at the same time as their power and influence are being eroded. The study concludes that a new episteme is more likely to emerge through the symbiosis of hybrid media and reflexive waves of networked individualism than systemic, organised attempts at online political disruption.