The exploration of developing digital components and integrating technology with design informs a new model for retail design. This model responds to its users and lets them engage more with the space than the traditional retail stores. It also provides an experiential space informing customers in more attractive interactive ways. Advances in computing technology and software, along with new ways to configure and display these systems, have made it possible to create a new generation of immersive environments. This new environment, which is integrated with design, gives more freedom to users. According to the more links and connections this immersive environments creates, It provides a more liberated environment that is free from place and time and engages more people to attend to the space and be a part of that. Equipping the retail with digital components makes it accessible for people to interact with each other and get any information they want. As a result, interactive retail space relies less on materials and locations and more on social and technical capabilities.

The exploration of developing digital components and integrating technology with design informs a new model for retail design. This model responds to its users and lets them engage more with the space than the traditional retail stores. It also provides an experiential space informing customers in more attractive interactive ways. Advances in computing technology and software, along with new ways to configure and display these systems, have made it possible to create a new generation of immersive environments. This new environment, which is integrated with design, gives more freedom to users. According to the more links and connections this immersive environments creates, It provides a more liberated environment that is free from place and time and engages more people to attend to the space and be a part of that. Equipping the retail with digital components makes it accessible for people to interact with each other and get any information they want. As a result, interactive retail space relies less on materials and locations and more on social and technical capabilities.

No description available.

Digital technologies have for many years been acclaimed as tools that hold the power to transform learning, yet educational research has so far failed to demonstrate the transformative effects of these digital technologies on learning outcomes (Cuban, 2001; Price and Kirkwood, 2011). Some research has even gone so far as to question this underlying assumption regarding digital technologies ability to transform education, suggesting that they do not in fact have any inherently positive benefits for learning, and that perceived benefits are actually artefacts produced by other factors (Means et al, 2009). Several potential causes have been proposed for the slow progress in educational technology, including lack of time for staff development, unsuitability of technologies, and cultural barriers within institutions (Laurillard, 2012a). A fourth potential cause may lie with the lack of theory to explain technologies themselves (Oliver, 2013). Different theoretical perspectives have been proposed as a way to enhance our understanding of technologies, with one potential candidate being the theory of affordances. The theory of affordances has been used extensively within many fields, including educational technology, but remains a divisive and often under-defined term (Hammond, 2010). This thesis argues that this may in part be due to its distortion through adoption in multiple disciplines, and its popular description as the ‘action possibilities’ presented by an object or scenario, something not present in the theory’s original conception. It is suggested that a return to the original theory of affordances as proposed by Gibson (1979), which attempted to explain how individuals derive meaning from the world around them, returns clarity to the theory. A particular focus on the underexplored aspects of intention and invariant, together with a re-appreciation of what it means to apply the theory of affordances to digital environments, to digital spaces and places, provides a way of thinking about affordance that arguably can be applied more constructively to the effective use of technology in education. A design-based research approach was taken in order to research the original concept of affordance, and its key components of intention and invariant, within learning scenarios supported by digital technologies. Design-based research is an evolving methodology, with no strict definition, but it has shown promise in both the design and the research of technology-enhanced learning environments (Wang and Hannafin, 2005). A pilot phase at secondary school level demonstrated the potential for the approach; multiple iterations at a higher education level developed and enriched these findings into a stable model for the alignment of digital technologies with a particular pedagogical scenario. Findings suggest that affordances can be used to ‘explain’ educational technology, if the concept is broadened to include the wider ecology of learning; digital technologies not only as tools, but also as places. Extending the notion of affordances from ‘action possibilities’ to ‘transaction possibilities’ gives agency to both learner and technology, and recognises the important contribution of the digital environment to the learner experience. A specific design framework is offered which uses this redefinition of affordances as a design tool to align an authentic learning scenario with the digital technologies that have the potential to support that learning scenario. A generic design methodology is proposed, based on this framework, which has the potential to align pedagogy and technology using this updated definition of affordance. To close, some thoughts on the value of the design-based research approach are discussed.

Considerando-se que a tecnologia assume um papel importante nos debates atuais sobre educação em virtude da rapidez e multiplicidade de seus efeitos na sociedade em rede (Castells, 2006), a presente pesquisa enfoca os letramentos como questão crucial à aprendizagem. O objetivo desta tese é investigar como estudantes universitários, usuários da Internet, de diferentes cursos, em universidades públicas e privadas, constroem sentidos, a partir de seus contextos sócio-culturais, em relação às diferentes formas de prática social e respectivas epistemologias. Para realizar esta pesquisa, um site foi criado no qual os participantes, hiperleitores, interagiam entre si, escolhendo temas de uma gama de modalidades as quais incluíam imagens, vídeo games, charges, conteúdo de emails, filmes, músicas, lendas urbanas e notícias de outras formas midiáticas. Esta tese baseia-se em concepções recentes sobre letramentos, principalmente o letramento crítico, como uma prática social. Nessa perspectiva, a construção de epistemologia, realidade e autoria são sempre concebidas como sendo situadas, múltiplas, contestáveis e sujeitas à transformação, conforme salientam Cope, Kalantzis, 2000; Gee, 2004; Lankshear, Knobel, 2005; Muspratt, Luke, Freebody, 1997. Nesta, procuro estabelecer uma conexão entre letramento crítico, hermenêutica crítica (Ricoeur, 1978) e desconstrução (Derrida, 1997). A conclusão revela que a Internet representa um espaço propício para a construção de conhecimento e sugere, como no título Letramentos na sociedade digital: navegar é e não é preciso, que certeza e incerteza coexistem no processo de navegação, conforme a construção de sentidos dos participantes na qual visões convencionais e mais críticas se mesclam. / Bearing in mind technology has played a very important role in contemporary debates about education due to its rapid and multiple effects in network society (Castells, 2006), this research assumes literacies as absolutely central to learning. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate how university students, familiar with the Internet, majoring in various courses, from private and public universities, construct meanings, from and with their historical contexts, in relation to different forms of social practices along with the kind of epistemology embedded with them. In order to carry out this investigation, a site was built in which the participants of this research, hyperreaders, interacted with each other through choosing to discuss issues from an array of modalities including images, video games, animated jokes, email contents, films, music, urban legends, current news from other media. This dissertation draws on contemporary notions of literacies, mainly critical literacy, as a social practice. From this perspective, it is assumed that the construction of epistemology, reality and authorship are always contextualized, multiple, questionable and subject to transformations, according to Cope, Kalantzis, 2000; Gee, 2004; Lankshear, Knobel, 2005; Muspratt, Luke, Freebody, 1997. The study connects critical literacy, critical hermeneutics (Ricoeur, 1978) and deconstruction (Derrida 1997). The conclusion reveals that the Internet represents a propitious space for knowledge construction and it suggests, as in the title Literacies in the digital society: navigating is and is not precise, that both certainty and uncertainty coexist in the process of navigation through the participants´ meaning making in which conventional and more critical views are intertwined.

Cyberqueer Techno-practices: Digital Space-Making and Networking by Swedish Gay Men     This study aims to highlight intersections of queer experiences and new media, by focusing on the use of digital platforms and communication practices among Swedish gay men. This is being carried out using a netnographic approach including an online survey and in-depth interviews among the target group, as well as field observations on gay catering online forums and GPS application software. Special attention is paid to the blur between online and offline, increasingly underpinned by innovations such as smartphones, tablet computers and GPS techniques, and how it may challenge and reconfigure concepts of public and private in relation to sexuality and sexual identity. Using a rich combination of queer theory and media and communication theory, the study intends to illuminate the underdeveloped potential of cross-fertilization between the fields. The concept of space has a central position, as the cyberqueer practices performed by gay men are argued to produce queer space that extends their social scope in a heteronormative environment. The interviews and the survey indicate that the use of digital media among gay men fulfill group specific purposes, for aspects such as social and sexual networking, as well as senses of community. Further, the possibility to visit digital spaces seems to have a particular significance during “coming-out processes”, since most of the informants have been dealing with their sexual identity and/or practice online, long before doing so offline. This is valid for individuals from both urban and rural areas, as the queer spaces online also are prioritized over offline alternatives when available.

Considerando-se que a tecnologia assume um papel importante nos debates atuais sobre educação em virtude da rapidez e multiplicidade de seus efeitos na sociedade em rede (Castells, 2006), a presente pesquisa enfoca os letramentos como questão crucial à aprendizagem. O objetivo desta tese é investigar como estudantes universitários, usuários da Internet, de diferentes cursos, em universidades públicas e privadas, constroem sentidos, a partir de seus contextos sócio-culturais, em relação às diferentes formas de prática social e respectivas epistemologias. Para realizar esta pesquisa, um site foi criado no qual os participantes, hiperleitores, interagiam entre si, escolhendo temas de uma gama de modalidades as quais incluíam imagens, vídeo games, charges, conteúdo de emails, filmes, músicas, lendas urbanas e notícias de outras formas midiáticas. Esta tese baseia-se em concepções recentes sobre letramentos, principalmente o letramento crítico, como uma prática social. Nessa perspectiva, a construção de epistemologia, realidade e autoria são sempre concebidas como sendo situadas, múltiplas, contestáveis e sujeitas à transformação, conforme salientam Cope, Kalantzis, 2000; Gee, 2004; Lankshear, Knobel, 2005; Muspratt, Luke, Freebody, 1997. Nesta, procuro estabelecer uma conexão entre letramento crítico, hermenêutica crítica (Ricoeur, 1978) e desconstrução (Derrida, 1997). A conclusão revela que a Internet representa um espaço propício para a construção de conhecimento e sugere, como no título Letramentos na sociedade digital: navegar é e não é preciso, que certeza e incerteza coexistem no processo de navegação, conforme a construção de sentidos dos participantes na qual visões convencionais e mais críticas se mesclam. / Bearing in mind technology has played a very important role in contemporary debates about education due to its rapid and multiple effects in network society (Castells, 2006), this research assumes literacies as absolutely central to learning. The aim of this dissertation is to investigate how university students, familiar with the Internet, majoring in various courses, from private and public universities, construct meanings, from and with their historical contexts, in relation to different forms of social practices along with the kind of epistemology embedded with them. In order to carry out this investigation, a site was built in which the participants of this research, hyperreaders, interacted with each other through choosing to discuss issues from an array of modalities including images, video games, animated jokes, email contents, films, music, urban legends, current news from other media. This dissertation draws on contemporary notions of literacies, mainly critical literacy, as a social practice. From this perspective, it is assumed that the construction of epistemology, reality and authorship are always contextualized, multiple, questionable and subject to transformations, according to Cope, Kalantzis, 2000; Gee, 2004; Lankshear, Knobel, 2005; Muspratt, Luke, Freebody, 1997. The study connects critical literacy, critical hermeneutics (Ricoeur, 1978) and deconstruction (Derrida 1997). The conclusion reveals that the Internet represents a propitious space for knowledge construction and it suggests, as in the title Literacies in the digital society: navigating is and is not precise, that both certainty and uncertainty coexist in the process of navigation through the participants´ meaning making in which conventional and more critical views are intertwined.

Coworking Spaces represent a global fast-growing trend which was able to gain momentum in research and academia, yet until now the fundamental role of IT within the coworking space ecosystem proves to be a rather unexplored topic for researchers and academia. Therefore, this research is about the role of space and information technologies (such as software, hardware, and more IT-related services) within CWSs; hence about the relation and interplay among those technologies, the involved actors and the physical environment in which the act of coworking takes place.

A discussion of the design, development, and evaluation of a computer-based lesson treating the subject of how light is represented in digital space. The report contains an analysis of the need for the project, a description of the product itself, and the methods and results of the evaluation. It also contains a literature review that discusses the supporting research concerning instructional graphics, animation and interactivity, as well as instructional design in general.

This study investigates how the members of four different role-playing communities on the online platform Second Life perform social as well as dramatic roles within their community. The trajectories of power influencing these roles are my main focus. Theoretically I am relying primarily on performance studies scholar Richard Schechner, sociologist Erving Goffman, and post-structuralists Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze and Felìx Guattari. My methodological stance has its origin primarily within literature studies using text analysis as my preferred method, but I also draw on the (cyber)ethnographical works of primarily T.L. Taylor, Celia Pearce, and Mikael Jakobsson. In this dissertation my focus is the relationship of the role-player to their chosen role especially in terms of the boundary between being in character, and as such removed from ”reality,” and the popping out of character, which instead highlights the negotiations of the social, sometimes make-belief, roles. Destabilising and problematising the dichotomy between the notion of the online as virtual and the offline as real, as well as the idea that everything is ”real” regardless of context, my aim is to understand role-play in a digital realm in a new way, in which two modes of performance, dramatic and social, take place in a digital context online — or inworld as many SL residents call it.