Link to Innovative Interactivity (II) & post: SMART Technologies' acquisition of NextWindow: A "smart window" to the world

I am happy to announce that will be contributing a post bi-weekly on the 1st and 3rd Thursday of each month for the  Innovative Interactivity (II) blog.

In my first post, I discuss interactive technologies in education and the explosion in the number of interactive whiteboards making way in classrooms in the US and around the globe.   The motivation for this post came from last week's announcement of Smart Technologie's acquisition of NextWindow.  Not long after the announcement, I had a chance to speak with Al Monro, CEO of NextWindow, and Nancy Knowlton, CEO of Smart Technologies. I share some of their insights in my post:

SMART Technologies' acquisition of NextWindow: A "smart window" to the world

About Innovative Interactivity (II):


"Innovative Interactivity serves as an open forum for multimedia producers, web developers and all other visualization junkies. Content focuses on the dynamics and theory of how people receive and react to different forms of information on the Web, both through visual, multimedia storytelling and interactive data visualization."

"The goal is that this blog will provide an outlet for those in the online realm, whether you are interested in learning about multimedia, interactivity, programming languages, data visualization, or all of the above. Hopefully you will be inspired from what you read here to surpass your current web standards in order to develop highly effective multimedia interactives for the digital community."

Tracy Boyer | Founder & Managing Editor

Tracy Boyer is an award-winning multimedia producer, specializing in interactive Web development and multimedia storytelling. Currently, she is a dual master’s candidate (MBA/MSIS) at UNC-Chapel Hill where she is studying Human-Computer Interaction in the School’s Information Science program and Entrepreneurship at Kenan-Flagler Business School.

Previously, she was a multimedia producer at Roanoke.com, served as the UNC correspondent for CNN.com and interned with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. In 2007, she was selected to participate in the Poynter Summer Fellowship. Boyer graduated with a multimedia degree from UNC’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Her passions lie in travel and multimedia production with a focus on video, audio and interactive graphics. See more of her work at www.tracynboyer.com.

Boyer is available for speaking engagements and seminars. Please contact her for more information.

Andrea Ballocchi | Spanish Editor & Social Media Manager

Andrea Ballocchi is a Chilean journalist. She studied video production at the Art Institute in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and worked as an assistant producer for Sábado Gigantes on channel 13 in Santiago, Chile, and as a producer at Anticipa, an internet company also in Chile.
In 2005, she participated in the multimedia project “The Ancient Way”, in Spain. Since then she has participated in several other projects, including “Chasing Crusoe,” “Atacama Stories,” “Special Olympics in Shanghai and Idaho,” and “South of Here.” She has also taught and coordinated projects at Universidad de los Andes, Chile.
Andrea Ballocchi is currently a multimedia journalism graduate student at the University of Miami, Fla. and works at The Knight Center for International Media.

Ellen Peck | Contributor, Philanthropic Multimedia

Posts publish bi-weekly on the 2nd and 4th Thursdays of each month

Ellen Peck works as consultant with a focus on the Non-profit sector. Ellen worked for over 15 years with Save the Children as a Director of Development, and also created and managed their Emergencies and Crisis Leadership Council. She has worked with start-up non-profits, and first-time capital campaigns for more established organizations. She has been involved in fundraising and strategic partnerships with individuals, corporations, foundations and organizations, and in strategic planning with artists, agency project teams and senior management at organizations for new initiative development.

Ellen also serves in the role of producer and creative/content advisor to documentary film, music and other projects in the arts associated with social and environmental issues. Her projects include the film and soundtrack for “Born into Brothels,” (USA) which garnered the Oscar for Best Documentary in 2005, and for “Stolen,” (Australia) currently showing at international film festivals.

Ellen is a Liberal Arts grad with a degree from Amherst College.

Lynn Marentette | Contributor, Academic Multimedia

Posts publish bi-weekly on the 1st and 3rd Thursdays of each month

Lynn Marentette has over 20 years of professional experience as a school psychologist, and has used interactive multimedia applications and games with students who have disabilities since the early 1990’s. She is passionate about emerging collaborative technologies, natural user interactions and interfaces, and how the power of interactive multimedia can be harnessed in education. In addition to her work as a psychologist, she blogs about accessible off-the-desktop natural-user interfaces at “Interactive Multimedia Technology.”

Lynn has presented on topics such as multimedia thinking and learning, universal usability of interactive multimedia, and universal design and accessibility for games. She returned to school a few years ago to learn how to make interactive multimedia applications and games for the web, handheld devices, and large displays, and has taken graduate courses such as game design, ubiquitous computing, and virtual reality in preparation for a potential PhD in Information Technology at UNC-Charlotte.

NY Time's David Pogue: iPad Town Hall Video

My daughter called me this morning to let me know that one of her house-mates has a brand-new iPad. So stay tuned. If I get a chance to play with it, I might do a hands-on review!

Barriers to Technology Integration - Hello! It's NOT always the teacher: One "classroom for the future" teacher's recent story about barriers to technology integration in her high school history class

If you work in education, you probably heard the term, "21st Century Schools". All teachers must become skillful integrators of technology and pedagogy, and this will be the solution to cure all of public education's ills, right?!

Many teachers DO embrace technology, but find that despite the technological revolution, there are many barriers to moving forward.

The link below is to a 2009 thesis written by Barbara J. Wismer, a teacher who devoted much of her her life, 24/7, as a Classroom for the Future teacher while working on her Master of Education degree. Her classroom was provided with a set of laptops, an interactive whiteboard, an LCD projector, a video camera, a digital camera, and an assortment of applications.  In her thesis, Ms. Wismer describes numerous barriers that she faced nearly every day during her study.  These are barriers that hold true throughout many schools in the U.S.  Ms. Wismer provides a personal description of her experiences, a breath of fresh air when compared with most academic papers that have crossed my path:

Wired Students, Motivated Learners:  The Effects of Classrooms for the Future Technology on Student Motivation and Achievement

Here are a few examples from the "Problems and Shortcomings" section of the thesis (p. 89-96):

"The “right click” function is disabled (it is also disabled for teachers, too). This made the copying and pasting of pictures and information more difficult."


"Flash drives (USB saving devices) are the biggest gripe among teachers in my district. We are not allowed to insert a flash drive into a school computer; it can result in immediate dismissal. The technology department places such a restriction (the staff has all the same restrictions as students) on us out of fear that someone will bring in a virus or operating system that could compromise our school district’s system. It is frustrating to be treated like we are children. There is constant uproar in the district to treat the teachers like adults and respect the decisions we make – like not abusing the right to use a flash drive. Many of the saving issues that I brought up previously could be avoided with the permission to use a flash drive."


"Internet connection and network connection issues plagued us the entire semester. There were some days when half of the class would lose their connection and any unsaved work would be lost."


"By why is Google Images blocked? Why are all blogs (even educational ones) blocked? Why can I not download a video from United Streaming or a flipchart from Promethean Planet? We were told that if we wanted any of those things downloaded, we were to provide a list to the technology department. I did that and was told that I could download them myself at home and then save them to a CD-ROM and bring them in to use."


"The only complaint that I would have is that about half of the teachers that have the equipment actually use it. The other half just lets the equipment sit in a closet. I have found that those teachers only signed up to be part of the Classrooms for the Future program to have a laptop cart permanently in their room."


I had no idea that teachers could be restricted from access to the right-click functions of their mice at work, and could be fired for inserting a flash drive into a school's computer!   Both restrictions had a negative impact on Ms. Wisner's ability to do her job with efficiency.


There is a long road ahead.


RELATED


21st Century Tech for 21st Century Schools
(Mark Prensky, Edutopia)
Classroom for The Future
Partnership for 21st Century Skills
National Educational Technology Plan 2010

National Educational Technology Plan Draft - A must-read.

The National Educational Technology Plan 2010 was released on 3/5/10 in draft format. It is well worth reading!

The NETP is consistent with the Framework for 21st Century Learning model, calling for schools to ensure students are prepared for the skills they will need in an increasingly complex, technological society:

"The model of 21st century learning described in this plan calls for engaging and empowering learning experiences for all learners. The model asks that we focus what and how we teach to match what people need to know, how they learn, where and when they will learn, and who needs to learn. It brings state-of-the art technology into learning to enable, motivate, and inspire all students, regardless of background, languages, or disabilities, to achieve. It leverages the power of technology to provide personalized learning instead of a one-size fits-all curriculum, pace of teaching, and instructional practices."

Secretary Duncan announcing the Education Technology Plan on YouTube


Hopefully the NETP initiative will encourage teachers to consider video clips for their students to explore that are more exciting than this well-meaning gentleman's talking head!

RESOURCES
Executive Summary PDF
National Ed Tech Plan PDF
NIMAS (Large - 300dpi)
NIMAS (Normal - 72dpi)

A message to a few of my beloved colleagues:

Teachers who are still struggling with figuring out how to access e-mail attachments and the basics of Microsoft Office 2003, this plan will call for a steep learning curve! I will be by your side to help.  It is good to know that David Rose, of CAST, the father of Universal Design for Learning, was one of the members of the NETP working group.

RELATED

National Educational Technology Plan Technical Working Group:

Daniel E. Atkins, University of Michigan
John Bennett, Akron Public Schools
John Seely Brown, Deloitte Center for the Edge
Aneesh Chopra, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
Chris Dede, Harvard University
Barry Fishman, University of Michigan
Louis Gomez, University of Pittsburgh
Margaret Honey, New York Hall of Science
Yasmin Kafai, University of Pennsylvania
Maribeth Luftglass, Fairfax County Public Schools
Roy Pea, Stanford University
Jim Pellegrino, University of Illinois, Chicago
David Rose, Center for Applied Special Technology (CAST)
Candace Thille, Carnegie Mellon University
Brenda Williams, West Virginia Department of Education

More Multi-touch: So touch Multi-touch Presentation Software for Windows 7

So touch is a creative software company that has developed So touch Presention for creating multi-touch presentations for Windows 7.  You can download a trial version from the So touch website.  Minimal requirements are a 1.6GHz processor (Core2 Duo), 2 Gb of RAM, and a 512Mb graphic card.)

Here's the promotional video:


Here is the promotional information from the So touch YouTube site:

"Create your own multi-touch presentations! Discover the NEW So touch Presentation software!


Get your audience captivated and make your presentations more intuitive and entertaining than ever!


Manipulate images or screenshots of your usual documents with multi-touch gestures! Navigate multi-
images format, scroll up and down long images. Then open the original file or document in one tap on the screen leveraging the usual Windows associated application!


Thank to its user-friendly visual administration interface, the So touch presentation software is easy to use and will bring to life your presentations on a day to day basis!"


For more information, get in touch at contact [at] so-touch [dot] com or visit http://www.so-touch.com


Music by http://www.myspace.com/wouhouh





FOR THE TECH-CURIOUS
"So touch Presentation for Windows 7 is developed using Adobe AIR and our unique AS3 framework for Adobe AIR and Windows 7 that is also available on our website! It is the first professional and transparent solution to develop Windows 7 compatible Adobe AIR applications. We are proud to be the first to announce it! There is some open source existing solutions but they don't offer the transparency and efficiency of SoBridge, the TUIO to Windows 7 C# bridge, included with So touch Framework."


Contact Person: Julien Lescure
Company Name: So touch
Telephone Number: +44 20 3239 3912
Email Address: contact[at]so-touch[dot]com
Web site address: http://www.so-touch.com

More Multi-touch: New video from NUITEQ: Snowflake Suite Multi-touch Software on a 46" HD LCD

Here is the promotional information from NUITEQ:


"NUITEQ's Snowflake Suite off the shelf multi-touch software product showcased on a 46" flat full HD multi-touch LCD.  Available for purchase now.


Snowflake Suite is honored with a Stevie Awards finalist recognition for Best Product or Service of the Year 2009 in the category Media and Entertainment for the International Business Awards. Snowflake Suite is available to OEM's, SI's, VAR's, software engineers and end clients. Snowflake Suite comes with hands full of multi-touch applications, an API and a SDK.


Compatible with different multi-touch hardware technology platforms, including: 3M Touch Systems, N-trig, NextWindow, Lumio, Nexio, IR Touch, rear camera based systems, dreaMTouch and others."


"Natural User Interface Technologies AB (NUITEQ) is a Swedish technology company, that offers off the shelf and customized software for interactive single and multi-touch devices. Additionally NUITEQ executes large scale customization projects, concerning multi-touch technology hardware, software and services. In parallel, NUITEQ is working on other innovative emerging technologies within the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI)."


Today's News:  NUITEQ wins MerlT Award for development through collaboration, growth potential and innovative thinking.


RELATED

NUITEQ Flat 46'' Multi-touch LCD

Key Features Size: 46" Snowflake Suite life time license included Full HD Simultaneous detectionand tracking of up 32 touch points Definite and reliable detection of touch points Real multi-touch function: no specific constraints, like temporal order or position of touch points Particularly suitable for embedded systems: Processing of complex evaluation steps via touch controller, e.g. keyboard emulation Sample rate: 50 frames/s Glass: 4 mm toughened safety glass Slim design: only 3 cm construction depth and 5 cm frame width USB interface and separate power supply No drift, no calibration required Applicable to all display technologies Protocol: TUIO Detection of size and position of objects in the active area 2 years warranty Electrical Power Supply: 19 V DC ± 20 % Power Consumption: 11 W Interface: USB 1.1, full speed   Functional Simultaneous Touch Points: 32 Touch Point Size: > 10 mm Spatial Resolution: < 2 mm Communication Protocol : Propriatary or ·· TUIO 1.0 (2Dcur and 25Dcur profiles) Scan Speed: 55 ms Mechanical Data Frame Dimensions: 1136 x 680 x 28 mm Frame Finish: Black powder coating (RAL 9011) Active Area: 1018.1 x 572.7 mm Window: 4 mm double-sided anti-reflective laminted safety filterglass Weight: 11 kg (including filter glass) Monitor: Direct fit to SHARP PN-465E (35,5 KG) Environmental Operating Temperature: 0 °C to 40 °C Operating Humidity: 20 % to 80 % (no condensation)

Also available as a horizontal solution.









NUITEQ Wiki
Harry van der Veen's NUITEQ Blog
(I've been following Harry van der Veen's journey since he was a university student. At the time, he was a leading member of the NUI-Group, creating a DYI multi-touch table as part of his studies. This was before Microsoft Surface was born.)

Web-based Technology-Supported Interaction: 6Rounds mixes webcam, games, and social media....

I've been so busy writing reports* that this almost passed me by!

I found out about 6rounds because they use Twitter as a promotional platform.  I happened to notice that this company was following me and clicked on the link.

6rounds started out as an outgrowth of a speed dating website, and the application was initially designed for people to use while waiting for speed dating sessions. According to the 6rounds website FAQ's, "6rounds is a live meeting point, offering users a variety of experiences that they enjoy together using a combination of webcams, real-time games, social activities and media engagements."

Since I'm a happily married middle-aged woman, I'm not sure 6rounds is up my alley.  I think  social singles, college students, and others who don't mind flashing their faces through a webcam would like it.

If I had time, I might like to play around with GixOO, the opensource API that underpins 6rounds. GixOO has the potential for developers to develop games and activities.  The application allows the users to track each other as they move their mice, and also enables people to see the same things as their friends as they interact online.

6rounds looks like it might provide possibilities for collaborative projects in education, but I won't be sure until I give it a try.

So what is 6rounds?



FOR THE TECH-CURIOUS

The following information was quoted from the Openomics blog from Sun Microsystem's  ISV Engineering:


"6rounds is the first product built on the GixOO live social platform, initially developped on the LAMP stack. As a member of the Sun Startup Essentials program, GixOO connected with Sun's ISV Engineering team to test the scalability of their platform on SAMP --the Solaris-based AMP stack, available in an integrated and optimized package from Sun, the Sun Glassfish Web Stack f.k.a. CoolStack. At the time, we ran the benchmark on a Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 server --featuring the 64-way CoolThreads processor UltraSPARC T2-- running Solaris 10 and CoolStack 1.3. GixOO loved the DTrace kernel instrumentation of Solaris 10 --DTrace gives unique insights into how the application performs, live on a production system-- and the Containers technology a.k.a. Zones --this light-weigth virtualization layer of Solaris allows multiple applications to run in isolation from each other on the same physical hardware--, and quickly adopted them for their internal use.

"At GixOO, we use Sun SPARC-based server, powered by Solaris 10 for our R&D environment. The system gives us the required flexibility and components isolation that we need. Thanks to SPARC's great SMP abilities, we achieve high performance for many development environments running on one single 1U server.
Solaris Zones are very comfortable and simple to configure, and allow the full utilization of the great power hidden in this small machine, which makes Solaris 10 an excellent choice for system administrators. We are using Sun MySQL Server which gives our application high speed data storage solution, and in the future we might migrate to the MySQL Cluster solution to get even faster results."
Dmitry Shestak, CTO, GixOO"

Somewhat Related

2/26/10: Oracle bought Sun in 2009. Here were the latest results when I did a search to get more information:

Not Really Related 


*For those new to this blog, I'm a school psychologist who returned to her day job full time a year and 1/2 ago, when the economy was taking a nosedive. Before that, I was working part-time and taking computer and technology classes, initially to learn how to create interactive multimedia applications and games.  


Since some of the kids and teens I work with have a range of abilities and disabilities, including autism, I developed an interest in accessibility.  How can universal design principles  be applied to games and emerging interactive technologies?   I'm also fascinated by interactive displays and surfaces of all sizes, especially ubiquitous systems that support cognition, collaboration and communication.  

One of my pet projects:

My vision? A collaborative multimedia, multi-modal interactive time-line might help us to understand  complex, interrelated factors and events more effectively. It would provide an opportunity for the inquisitive to view things from a broad perspective, and also explore things in rich detail. Ideally, the time-line would support multi-touch, multi-user interaction on larger displays and interactive whiteboards, and allow for people who are remotely located to participate in the process. 


Now that one of my schools will be getting a multi-touch SMARTTable, I'd like to experiment with time-line concepts and interactions on a table surface. I'd also like to figure out how this can work seamlessly with the existing SMARTBoard that is in the classroom.  Of course, this would have to take place during after work hours!

SMART Table Videos

One of the schools I serve as a school psychologist will be getting a SMARTTable. We've decided to enter the SMART Table multi-touch application contest, which means that we'll have to put our ideas into action soon, July 1st, to be exact. (We will be working on this project after work hours.)

The purpose of this post is to provide a spot to keep videos related to the SMARTTable, as well as other multi-touch tables used with students, so team members watch the table in action. (I will move this content to a special website for this project when I get a moment!)

Our school recently received about 8 SMARTBoards, and since every classroom is geared for students with severe disabilities, including autism, I thought I'd share the following video first. The students have started to work cooperatively and have begun to develop more communication skills:

SMARTBOARD AND STUDENTS WITH SEVERE DISABILITIES

(The teacher in this video uses theZACH browser, designed for students with autism, to help them independently navigate to interactive websites. The Zac browser can be navigated with a Wii remote controller, too.)

SMARTTable- Engaged Students from Davie County


ALIVE OR NOT ALIVE


ANIMAL NEEDS:


ADDITION AND SUBTRACTION


1MORE, 1 LESS

"In this table activity 1 More, 1 Less students work on a series of touch exercises in the tables Multiple Choice, Hot Spaces and Hot Spots applications where they can practice simple addition and subtraction."

WHAT IS REAL ABOUT PLANTS AND ANIMALS?


ALPHABET

"In this table activity Alphabet students work on a series of touch exercises in the tables Multiple Choice and Hot Spots applications where they can learn about different letters of the alphabet."


HOW-TO VIDEOS FOR THE SMART TABLE


Adding background images from SMART Notebook using Windows XP


SMARTTable Toolkit: Adding background images from SMART Notebook using MAC OSX

RENCI Visualization Center Update & Link to Innovative Interactivity post

I've been meaning to visit a few of North Carolina's RENCI visualization centers, but I just haven't had a moment to squeeze the field trip in my schedule.  Tracy Boyer, who authors the Innovative Interactivity blog, had a chance to visit the center in Chapel Hill


For those of you who can't visit a RENCI center, visit Tracy's blog and read about her first-hand experience as a visitor: RENCI pioneering the visualization industry with innovative interfaces
I found a link to the following project, "The Docuverse",  deep within one of the RENCI websites:


The Docuverse: 1.5 million documents on the screen at once.

"The Docuverse is a method of displaying an entire digital library on a screen at once. The Docuverse takes a digital library of HTML documents and a set of queries and creates a “universe” around these queries. Each “galaxy” corresponds to a library query. Each “star” corresponds to a document. The most relevant documents found through a query are the stars located close to the center of a galaxy. Documents perceived by a search engine as less relevant are out among the arms of the galaxies. The visualization is interactive, allowing the user to zoom in and out of galaxies, change queries, and overlay different kinds of data mining results onto the visualization to show how documents with certain characteristics are distributed throughout the collection."

-RENCI


Below are a couple of videos from RENCI's YouTube channel:





Unity 3D Game Engine running on a multi-projector dome system using JavaScript:

FYI:  C#/WPF App to open Unity plug-in window at custom dimension

RENCI Focus Areas (from the RENCI website):
Biosciences & Health
Computing & Technology
Data & Information Management
Disaster & Environmental Research
Economic Development
Education and Outreach
Humanities, Arts and Social Science
Visualization & Collaborative Environments
Project Archive


RELATED
Multi-Touch at RENCI
Research by Touch:  RENCI Multitouch Table Gives Computer Science Research an Intuitive Interface
RENCI Anchor at Europa Center
RENCI at Duke University
RENCI at ECU
RENCI at North Carolina State University
RENCI at UNC Asheville
RENCI at UNC Chapel Hill 
RENCI at UNC Charlotte
RENCI at UNC Coastal Studies Institute
RENCI at UNC HSL

How to visit RENCI at UNC Chapel Hill

Two topics: Visualizing Unemployment by County over Time; Kurt Squire's Recent Work on ( Video) Game-Based Learning

Below is a screen shot of a web page that shows the increase in the number of unemployed people, by county, in the U.S. from January 2007 until November 2009. According to information from the web site, the data is from the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics.

From what I can tell from the URL, this visualization was a multimedia final project of Latoya Egwuekwe. Here is the link to the webpage: Unemployment Rates by County, January 2007 through November 2009

Here is the YouTube version:



Thanks to Kurt Squire for the link!

About Kurt Squire:
Kurt is an assistant professor of educational communications and technology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and is associated with the Academic ADL Co-lab.   He previously was the research manager of the Games-to-Teach Project at MIT and co-director of the Education Arcade.  He also was a Montessori and primary school teacher.

I encourage you to take a look at Kurt Squire's recent research and work.  I reviewed some of his earlier work for a paper I wrote back in 2004, when he was  It is exciting to see how far his research in the area of game-based learning environments has come since then.

Here are links to a few of Kurt Squire's publications:
Video game-based learning: An emerging paradigm for Instruction
Open-Ended Video Games: A Model for Developing Learning for the Interactive Age
From Information to Experience: Place-Based Augmented Reality Games as a Model for Learning in a Globally Networked Society
Video Games and Education: Designing learning systems for an interactive age
Video-Game Literacy: A Literacy of Expertise (To appear in J. Coiro, M. Knobel, D. Leu, & C. Lankshear, Handbook of research on new media literacies. New York: MacMillan.)


More about the Academic ADL Co-Lab:
Local Games Lab
"Many kinds of games can be made about local environments. At the moment we are most engaged with augmented reality (AR) games in which players use digital technologies to enhance their immediate experience of walking around in real-life locations. We are also interested, among other possibilities, in classroom simulations, board games, virtual tours, and desktop video games."


CivWorld!

"This is a site for people interested in using Sid Meier's Civilization for learning academic content, including history, geography, or even game design. We have custom-designed game scenarios, curricula, case studies, and experts on using Civ for learning. Our goal is to help players, students, parents, and even teachers use the game at home, in after school centers and maybe even classrooms."

Gamers, game designers, and parents: "Mortal Combat", a documentary by Spencer Halpin about the game violence debate is worth watching -posted here.

Spencer Halpin's documentary, Mortal Kombat, discusses the debate surrounding about the content of video games, as well as issues such as the video game industry's drive for profit, artistic freedom, "pushing the envelope", and the impact of video games on society. The video is about 85 minutes, but worth watching if you are a gamer, parent, teacher, game designer/ developer, or academician.

One of the reasons I think the discussion in the video is important is that in 2010, more people are playing games on large high-definition displays, providing an enhanced sense of immersion. I'm not sure what the consequences of this trend might be.

Caution:  There are some scenes in this video that might be offensive/violent, and others that would not be appropriate for children.


Here is the description of this video from the Babelgum website:

"Moral Kombat takes a look into the controversial subject of violence in video games. Director Spencer Halpin shows the constant conflict between the game creators' first amendment right to make a violent game and the eminent threat that violence poses on the next generation. In addition, the film is full of the latest green screen and high-definition technology that allow watchers to actually envision the world of gaming. Filled with interviews from lead game designers, politicians, parents, and psychologists, this film provides a candid take on the influence games have on youth today."



Thanks to Henry Jenkins for providing this link.

MediaTeam's Interactive Wall and Table

Interactive Touchscreens

Interactive Table

Mediateam Interactive Multitouch Table from mediateam on Vimeo.

Wall Screen

Mediateam Interactive Multitouch Screen from mediateam on Vimeo.
Video is from Mediateam

-via NUITEQ

I don't have much information about Mediateam. I think it might be MediaTeam Oulu, but I'm not sure. MediaTeam Oulu has quite a bit of research that focuses on ubiquitous computing.

For Techies & Tech Curious: Python and PyMT developments - PyMT and speech recognition

PyMT is short for Python Multi-Touch, a project that is the work of several members of the NUI Group.  Sharath Patali experimented with speech input for PyMT and used the pocketsphinx library from CMU to integrate into PyMT. It worked out well, as you can see from his video demo below:


PyMT Speech Recognition from Sharath Patali on Vimeo.

Other people involved with the PyMT project are Nathanael Lecaude, Matthew Virbel, Thomas Hansen, and Xelapond.

Sharath Patali's Blog/Website Roll (Links to some NUI-group members)

• Divesh and Aditya’s Blog
• Harry van der Veen’s Blog
• Laurence Muller's Blog
• Linux Hacker ( Balaji R Rao)
• Paul D’Intino’s Orion
• Seth Sandler (Cerupcat)
• Sparsh-I Team
• Tommy’s MT Blog

Matthieu Virbel on Vimeo
NUI Group on Vimeo


Python and Game Programming Resources
Adaptation and Evaluation of Numpty Physics for Multi-touch Multiplayer Interaction (pdf)
(A python-based module called "numptyphysics" was created to integrate Python multi-touch cold to allow the C++ code to parse data, converting it to C structs passed to the game code using pointers.)
Python Programming Language Official Website
Pygame
PythonGames
PythonL Game Programming Wiki, by Geoff Howland and Rene Dudfield
Lectures 1-6
Beginning Game Development with Python and Pygame -Book (Will McGugan)
Game Programming with Python - Book (Sean Riley)

Comment:
The reason I'm putting together resources about Python, multi-touch, and games is that I hope to facilitate an exchange between two of the schools I serve as a school psychologist.

Both of the schools are on the same campus. One is a high school for technology and the arts, and one is a program for teens and young adults who have severe disabilities, including autism.  Next semester, one of the computer teachers will be teaching a game programming class using Python for a class of graduating seniors, and if all goes well, perhaps some of the students will create a game for the students with disabilities that would work well on a SMARTboard.

Even better:  It would be great if the pre-engineering students could build a multi-touch table or two for the students with disabilities, running games in PyMT that the computer students create!

Touch-screen Interaction at Digital Bus Shelter - Video via Daily DOOH

JCDecaux Innovate Touch-Screen Bus Shelters
Chris Sheldrake, Daily DOOH (Digital Out of Home) 12/2/09

RELATED
The World is My Web Browser: Interactive Technology in Public Spaces
(Watch the video of the interactive "Splat the Cadbury Creme Egg" game played on a large touch screen display at a bus shelter.)

JCDecaux Innovate - Gorillaz for Bus Shelters

People-Centric Public Media, Public Media 2.0, & New Media: Considerations for Interactive, Collaborative Multimedia Content

I followed a link from an article written by Andy Oram, of the O'Reilly Radar and found some interesting information related to public media. The graphics and quotes below are from a publication, Public Media 2.0: Dynamic, Engaged Publics (pdf), written by people from the Center for Social Media at the School of Communication, American University.

Public Media 2.0: Dynamic, Engaged Publics    Full Report pdf

Center for Social Media,  School of Communication, American University



"Multi-platform, participatory, and digital, public media 2.0 will be an essential feature
of truly democratic public life from here on in. And it’ll be media both for and by the
public. The grassroots mobilization around the 2008 electoral campaign is just one
signal of how digital tools for making and sharing media open up new opportunities
for civic engagement.

But public media 2.0 won’t happen by accident, or for free. The same bottom-line logic
that runs media today will run tomorrow’s media as well. If we’re going to have media
for vibrant democratic culture, we have to plan for it, try it out, show people that it
matters, and build new constituencies to invest in it.

The first and crucial step is to embrace the participatory—the feature that has also been most disruptive of current media models. We also need standards and metrics to define truly meaningful participation in media for public life. And we need policies, initiatives, and sustainable financial models that can turn today’s assets and experiments into tomorrow’s tried-and-true public media.

Public media stakeholders, especially such trusted institutions as public broadcasting, need to take leadership in creating a true public investment in public media 2.0."

Action Agendas
"Public media institutions and makers need to develop a participatory national network and platform; to cross cultural, social, economic, ethnic, and political divides; to collaborate; and to learn from others’ examples, including their mistakes.

• Policymakers need to create structures and funding to support national coordination of public media networks and funding for production, curation, and archiving; to use universal design principles in communications infrastructure policy and universal service values in constructing and supporting infrastructure; to support lifelong education that helps everyone be media makers; and to build grassroots participation into public policy processes using social media tools.

• Funders can invest in media projects that build democratic publics; in norms setting, standardization of reliability tools, and impact metrics; and in experiments in media making, media organizations, and media tools, especially among disenfranchised communities."
Some key points from the article:
Five fundamental ways that people's media habits are changing - The Five Media Habits:
Choice
Conversation
Curation
Creation
Collaboration
Trends with possibilities for public media 2.0:
Ubiquitous video (choice, creation, collaboration)
Powerful databases (curation, creation)
Social networks as public forums (conversation, collaboration)
Locative media (choice, creation)
Distributed distribution (choice, curation)
Hackable platforms (creation, collaboration, curation)
Accessible metrics (creation, curation)
Cloud content (choice, creation)
Pervasive gaming (choice, collaboration)

RELATED
Eight Public Media 2.0 Projects That Are Doing it Right
Jessica Clark, Mediashift, 10/6/09
("MediaShift tracks how new media -- from weblogs to podcasts to citizen journalism -- are changing society and culture.")
The intersection of media literacy and public media 2.0
Katie Donnelly, Public Media 2.0, 10/16/09
VoiceThread "VoiceThread is a powerful new way to talk about and share your images, documents, and videos"

I'll update this post with some of my thoughts/reflections about Public Media 2.0 and interactive multimedia content development.