Quick Post/Link: digitalculturebooks: New Media Studies & Digital Humanities at University of Michigan

I graduated from the University of Michigan years ago and would have been thrilled to participate in a project such as the new "digitalculturalbooks".  Sadly, the my undergraduate education pre-dated the internet and the explosion of engaging technologies!  

Here is information about digitalculturebooks from the "about" section of the website, via graduate student Jonathan Tarr:


digitalculturebooks is an imprint of the University of Michigan Press and the Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan Library dedicated to publishing innovative work in new media studies and the emerging field of digital humanities. digitalculturebooks seeks to explore all aspects of new media and its impact on society, culture, and scholarly communication and will present work that exhibits and advances the understanding of the relationship between humanities and digital technologies. The imprint aspires to both investigate and demonstrate new forms of scholarly practice in the humanities.
digitalculturebooks is an experimental publishing strategy with a strong research component. By making our content available in print and online, we intend to:

• develop an open and participatory publishing model that adheres to the highest scholarly standards of review and documentation;
• develop a model for press/library collaboration at Michigan and elsewhere;
• showcase and extend Michigan's leading role in the development of digital resources;
• encourage and participate in a national dialogue about the future of scholarly communication.

• About Us
• Our Books
• Book Series
• Use Guidelines

• News
• For Authors
• XML Publishing

What We're Reading

• Au Courant
• booktwo.org
• Collision Detection
• danah boyd
• Media Commons
• Mimi Ito
• O'Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing
• Publishing Frontier
• Scholarly Communications @ Duke

 Jonathan Tarr established a Facebook page for digitalculturebooks.    More info to come!

 

Demo of Duke University's multi-touch wall at RENCI, running the Cobalt Metaverse Browser

The video below shows the "pre-alpha" version of the Cobalt Metaverse Browser:



"This video shows the Cobalt metaverse browser being tested on a 13-foot by 5-foot multi-touch visualization wall equipped with six high-definition projectors located at the Renaissance Computing Institute engagement center at Duke University. The input drivers are being developed by Dr. Xunlei Wu so that users can directly manipulate high-resolution data using both hands and multiple fingers for a more natural and intuitive data exploration experience. In the video, Dr. Wu is using both gesture and touch to navigate through, and rearrange content between, two Cobalt virtual worlds."

Related:
The Open Cobalt Project (on ning)
Cobalt Website & link to download to the latest pre-alpha build
Cobalt Community,
Cobalt Google Group
EduSim (A 3D multi-user virtual world platform and authoring toolkit for K-12 interactive whiteboards. The latest version is powered by Cobalt)

Cobalt can import objects from the Google 3D warehouse as well as Google Sketch-up:
Video Tutorial: Using Google 3D Warehouse to build Cobalt & Edusim Virtual Worlds

People:
Julian Lombardi, Duke University
Xunlei Wu, Senior Visualization Researcher, RENCI, Duke University
Rich White, EduSim; Greenbush Education Service Center, Girard, KS

Kids using Cobalt-based EduSim on desktop computers, via Rich White:

3D Collaborative Applications for Interactive Displays and Whiteboards: Croquet, EduSim

EduSim is an application for use on interactive whiteboards and displays, created using Croquet.

According to Julian Lombardi, Duke University's Assistant Vice President of Academic Services and Technology Support and Senior Research Scholar with the Information Science + Information Studies, "Croquet is a powerful new open source software development environment for creating and deploying deeply collaborative multi-user online applications on multiple operating systems and devices. Derived from Squeak, it features a peer-based network architecture that supports communication, collaboration, resource sharing, and synchronous computation between multiple users on multiple devices. Using Croquet, software developers can create and link powerful and highly collaborative cross-platform multi-user 2D and 3D applications and simulations - making possible the distributed deployment of very large scale, richly featured and interlinked virtual environments."

EduSim "How To" Videoclips

EduSim Videos
Croquet Screenshots

Related Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning, edited by Richard E. Mayer, provides a good framework to support the importance of learning and interacting with multimedia.

According to information from the book, "Multimedia learning is defined as learning from words (e.g., spoken or printed text) and pictures (e.g., illustrations, photos, maps, graphs, animation, or video)... Multimedia environments included on-line instructional presentations, interactive lessons, e-courses, simulation games, virtual reality, and computer-supported in-class presentations...The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning seeks to establish what works (i.e., to determine which features of a multimedia lesson affect learning), to explain how it works (i.e., to ground research in cognitive theory), and to consider when and where it works (i.e., to explore the implications of research for practice)".