Individuals with autism require systematic assistance while dealing with the surrounding environment and its objects. The project aim is to develop a framework that could be of substantial help to people with autism and cognitive disorders. The framework is based on common mobile devices and freely available Augmented Reality (AR) applications. The Augmented Reality used in our approach is marker-based AR that employs a camera and a visual marker to trigger and present media content on the mobile device’s screen. The developed framework allows parents and teachers to easily create educational augmented environments for children with autism and cognitive disorders by populating a real-world space with visual markers of favorite cartoonish helpers that can evoke helpful AR content and embed it in the real-world environment. The paper analyzes and discusses the use of the proposed framework from conceptual and technological points of view.
IntroductionOur experience of evolving economies contains one major peculiarity related to the changes in their educational systems: in measuring the transformation to a market economy, the scale of non-governmental, private sector and, correspondingly, financial capital steadily increases (Bjarnason, Cheng & Fielden, 2009). It is perfectly in order to apply the logic of the market in this context: commodityfinance relations cover not only the material production and service sphere, but also the field of production and dissemination of knowledge and technologies. However, supporters of the commercialisation of culture and education are frequently criticised, in particular over issues of quality assurance. But it can be argued that the issue of quality depends on whether we are looking at mass or élite (meritocratic) education. Élite education will always maintain high quality. But, by its very definition, mass education cannot and, indeed, should not pretend to the same standards. That being the case, an overriding argument in favour of private education (both mass and élite) is that private investment, rather than budgetdriven, government financing can ensure greater flexibility and adaptability of the educational process to the rapidly changing requirements of the labour market. No less important is the fact that financial independence from the State, with its rigid system of control and distribution of resources, allows the practical realisation of two fundamental principles of higher education -the academic autonomy of universities and the assurance of commercial controls.As demonstrated by internationally renowned private universities, such as Harvard and Stanford in the United States and Waseda in Japan, with the right investment of private capital and effective management, the possibility of a high and sustainable output or profit (to use the language of economists) of both material and non material assets is enhanced. However, one should not exaggerate the role of private, non-state professional and vocational education: it depends very much on the specific social and economic situation and cultural-historical traditions. Today's world has a great range of organisational and legal forms of managing educational institutions and their practices. But a significant consistent pattern is found in transition economies in almost all countries. It is this: regarding the level of development of market-economies, the scale of private finance in the sphere of professional education and training steadily increases and gradually replaces public funds; and the privatisation of education is introduced. In this article we focus on the peculiarities of that process in Russia.
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