George F. Fragulis

Heracles Michailidis, Eleni Michailidi, Stavroula Tavoultzidou et al.

The use of tangible interfaces in teaching has been proved more effective, user -friendly and helpful in collaborative learning departments, when compared to traditional teaching approaches. In particular, the tangible interface "Makey Makey"is a modern tool that enhances collaboration between pupils, with positive results in education, despite the limited research done on this interface so far. "Makey Makey" succeeds in motivating and engaging young learners in the learning process, showing better performance and scoring results. In addition, its use in teaching has been shown to benefit the learning process in every age learning group.The development and use of such an innovative teaching/learning approach helps young learners perceive the educational process in a different way and assimilate new cognitive fields more effectively. Moreover, educators profit as well, as they can eliminate difficulties and teach more efficiently using examples based on their teaching approach, while enhancing young learners parallel skills as well. This study will confirm previous research results stating that assimilation of new concepts is easier with tangible interfaces than with graphical ones, as well as that young learners participating in the survey have shown significant progress in knowledge acquisition when compared to their prior knowledge.

Maria Papatsimouli, Lazaros Lazaridis, Konstantinos-Filippos Kollias et al.

Sign Language is used to facilitate the communication between Deaf and non-Deaf people. It uses signs-words with basic structural elements such as handshape, parts of face, body or space, and the orientation of the fingers-palm. Sign Languages vary from people to people and from country to country and evolve as spoken languages. In the current study, an application which aims at Greek Sign Language and English Sign Language learning by hard of hearing people and talking people, has been developed. The application includes grouped signs in alphabetical order. The user can find Greek Sign Language signs, English sign language signs and translate from Greek sign language to English sign language. The written word of each sign, and the corresponding meaning are displayed. In addition, the sound is activated in order to enable users with partial hearing loss to hear the pronunciation of each word. The user is also provided with various tasks in order to enable an interaction of the knowledge acquired by the user. This interaction is offered mainly by multiplechoice tasks, incorporating text or video. The current application is not a simple sign language dictionary as it provides the interactive participation of users. It is a platform for Greek and English sign language active learning.

Christos Tolis, George F. Fragulis

The purpose of this paper is to present the construction and programming of a five degrees of freedom robotic arm which interacts with an infrared sensor for the identification and sorting of different sized objects. The main axis of the construction design will be up to the three main branches of science that make up the Mechatronics: Mechanical Engineering, Electronic-Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering. The methods that have been used for the construction are presented as well as the methods for the programming of the arm in cooperation with the sensor. The aim is to present the manual and automatic control of the arm for the recognition and the installation of the objects through a simple (in operation) and low in cost sensor like the one that was used by this paper. Furthermore, this paper presents the significance of this robotic arm design and its further applications in contemporary industrial forms of production.