GeoBreakouts - Learning and teaching geography with Escape Games
Ms Pola Serwene, M.Ed.
AG Didactics of Geography
Institute for Environmental Sciences and Geography
Supported within the framework of FöWiTec "Projects for the Promotion of Knowledge and Technology Transfer".
The aim of the project is to develop so-called "GeoBreakouts". These are Escape Games to promote action and evaluation skills in the sense of Education for Sustainable Development. Escape games are a form of game-based learning (Nicholson 2018). Pupils solve various tasks and puzzles and crack codes in a given time. The goal is to open a kind of "treasure chest" (Schwarz 2019). Escape games are based on the so-called Escape Rooms. Here, game groups have to free themselves from a room in a given time by cooperatively solving puzzles, finding secret doors and deciphering codes.
Visualisation of landscape changes using AR in real environments
Dr. Gerold Zeilinger
AG General Geology
Institute for Geosciences
Supported within the framework of FöWiTec "Projects for the Promotion of Knowledge and Technology Transfer".
Instead of changing the real environment in a visualisation in the planning office, this project will make it possible to fade in changes of the landscape on site into the real environment. Using AR glasses, it will be possible to virtually modify the landscape by means of gestures (e.g. ditches or dams) and to move virtual objects in a precise position (e.g. position of wind turbines). These changes are transmitted to a GIS server and used to model the effects (e.g. damming of water bodies and altered shadow casting). These impacts are in turn transmitted back to the AR glasses. Several synchronised glasses then allow the decision-makers to play through the different variants on site and assess their impact. This is to be developed into a service that provides a visualisation and GIS calculations adapted to the customer's needs.
Academisation of the management staff of child day care centres: Qualification for leadership and management functions through innovative further training
Dr. rer. pol. habil. Christoph Rasche
Management, Professional Services & Sports Economics
Supported within the framework of FöWiTec "Projects for the Promotion of Knowledge and Technology Transfer
In contrast to other European countries, there is an evident gap in academisation for the staff of day-care centres and their institutions. While in most EU countries early childhood education and upbringing is seen as a genuine field of academisation, in Germany there is a great need to catch up in this respect, which is to be covered at the university in close coupling with the IFK at the University of Potsdam within the framework of an academic continuing education programme.The participants of the further training are to acquire application-oriented specialist knowledge about the basics of administration for running day care centres as well as methodological-psychological competences for working with day care centre managers, day care centre teams and families. For this purpose, a competence framework, competence standards and a catalogue of minimum training content are to be developed that corresponds to academic standards in the fields of educational sciences, management, law and communication sciences. For the first time, academic continuing education is to be offered in the low-threshold ECTS range (e.g. Certificate of Basic Studies), following the Swiss model.
Classification of georadar data for automated condition assessment of railway lines
Dr. Niklas Allroggen
Institute for Geosciences
Supported within the framework of FöWiTec "Projects for the Promotion of Knowledge and Technology Transfer".
The condition assessment of infrastructure presents society with ever greater technical and financial challenges. One promising method for the rapid exploration of long survey routes (e.g. motorways or railway lines) is the georadar method. While measurement technology in this field has made great progress in recent years, there is a lack of efficient evaluation routines for the recorded data. This project is about applying novel attribute and classification based methods to an industrial georadar data set. In this way, the possibility of an automatic evaluation is to be demonstrated. For this purpose, an existing data set will be evaluated in cooperation with DB E&C GmbH and the results of the automated evaluation will be compared with the existing results. This should make it possible to increase the evaluation speed and enable even more efficient condition recording.
Voculus - Reading by Listening
Prof. Dr. Guido Nottbusch
Chair of Primary School German Education
Supported within the framework of FöWiTec "Projects for the Promotion of Knowledge and Technology Transfer
Reading competence is a crucial prerequisite for participation in the information society. With our app 'Voculus', which plays audio books and displays the corresponding eBook, we would like to promote the reading fluency of pupils. The simultaneous perception of phonological and orthographic information should strengthen their connection. At the same time, the professional speakers can serve as a model of meaning-supporting intonation. By automatically adjusting the reading speed, weaker readers are also empowered to read books without assistance (e.g. in homeschooling), which contributes both to equal opportunities and to reading motivation.
