Computer Vision and The Towers of Hanoi:
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Rationale: In this project we designed a computer-mediated learning task based on the traditional mathematics puzzle, the Towers of Hanoi. Targeted at middle and high school students, the application will help them to learn advanced concepts, like recursion and graph coloring, as they physically try to solve the puzzle in real time, working in groups of two or three. The Prototype: The student interface consists of a graphic display of the current state of the puzzle, and a graphic of Sierpinski's Triangle which represents all of the possible moves in the game. As the pieces are moved both the board state and the triangle are updated. Students can look at the triangle to see where in the sequence of moves they are toward solving the puzzle. The ToH application is written in Macromedia Director MX’s scripting language, Lingo. An extension to Director, TrackThemColors, enables Director MX to process DV camera input in real time. The prototype runs on either Mac OSX or Windows XP platforms. ToH was presented at CTE at Stony Brook in January 2005. This work is supported by an NSF CRCD grant (#0203333). |