Microsoft's Photosynth: Immersive Learning Possibilties

I just came across an interesting article in the on-line MIT Technology Review, written by Jeffery MacIntyre, about Photosynth, developed by Microsoft's Live Labs:

Microsoft's Shiny New Toy: Photosynth is an application that's still a work in progress. It is dazzling, but what is it for?

I think that the PhotoSynth application would be very useful in education settings - K-12 and also at the university level. More classrooms now have interactive whiteboards that connect to the Web, providing a broader range of possibilities for educators to create engaging, immersive learning experience for their students. Young people would have the opportunity to experience virtual field trips and collaborate with students around the world. An application such as PhotoSynth, coupled with an information/data visualization component, would be quite useful in high school and university classrooms.

From the TechReview Article:


"You are here: Photosynth, an application in development at Microsoft’s Live Labs, offers an immersive way to view photos of a given thing or place. The software has not yet been released, but Microsoft is demonstrating it online with photo collections such as this one of Venice’s St. Mark’s Square." Credit: Courtesy of Microsoft Live Labs

Below are links from the TechReview article:

"Watch Photosynth stitch photos together." "View images from Photosynth and see how it works."

From Microsoft's Website: "Photosynth takes a large collection of photos of a place or object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed 3-Dimensional space." "With Photosynth you can: walk or fly through a scene to see photos from any angle; seamlessly zoom in or out of a photograph even if it's gigapixels in size; see where pictures were taken in relation to one another; find similar photos to the one you’re currently viewing; explore a custom tour or see where you’ve been; or send a collection to a friend."

If any readers have thoughts about the use of PhotoSynth in educational settings or situations, please leave a comment!

Microsoft's PhotoSynth website

British Library's Online Gallery: Turning the Pages- Great for an interactive whiteboard or display

The British Library offers an on-line interactive gallery, "Turn the Pages" , where you can "turn" the pages of great books, page by page, view additional information about the information of the page you are looking at, and also listen to an audio description. You also have the option of using a magnifying feature that you can move over the surface of the page to get a closer view of the text or illustrations.

If you have an interactive touch screen display or whiteboard, you can turn the pages with your hand, and also move the magnifying viewport about the screen. What a great resource for the classroom!

Here is additional information from the "Turning the Pages" website that will help you get started:

"The standard version of Turning the Pages™ uses the Shockwave plugin, which can be downloaded from the Adobe website, to simulate the action of turning the pages of a real book. For Mac OS X users there is an alternative download. The volumes may not open if you block popups on your computer. Technical specification"

"A new version, Turning the Pages 2.0™, runs on Microsoft Vista operating system (and on Windows XP with the .NET 3 framework). It will also run on other operating systems using the Microsoft Silverlight plugin. Technical specification"

"And there are alternative versions which do not need a plugin but display static images (and enlargements) in standard web pages, in the same window."

Here are some sample titles:

Masterpiece of the Renaissance, Landmarks in Medical History, Glimpses of Medieval Art, Mozart's Musical Diary (with 75 audio excerpts), 15th-Century Church Book, Flemish Masters in Miniature,
Sketches by Leonardo, Classic of Botanical Illustration, The Original Alice, by Lewis Carrol....

Information Visualization: Revisiting Hans Rosling's TED presentation

This semester I'm taking "Visualization and Visual Communication", which is a course I've wanted to take for a while now. Today, we looked at a variety of websites that provide interactive information data visualization applications, which I'll share on this blog in the near future.

After class, I came home and revisited Hans Rosling's TED presentation about information visualization, and thought I'd share it on this blog. This video is about 20 minutes, and provides a good overview how simple interactive information visualization applications can help to convey concepts and correct misconceptions in an engaging, effective manner.



For those of you who work in K-12 settings, imagine how powerful this method of visual communication would be for students, if presented on an interactive whiteboard or display.

Scratch: A new programming language for kids that supports stories, animations, games, music, art, and web-sharing, from MIT.

"Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design." (Scratch website)

Scratch can be downloaded, free of charge, from the website. It can run on Windows as well on Macs. There are over 12,000 contributors to this project, with over 60,000 registered members. The website provides plenty of support for teachers and students.

The Scratch project is run by the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab, along with the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies. The project was funded by the National Science Foundation.

I'm looking forward to playing with Scratch on a touch-screen or interactive whiteboard.

Leave a comment if you use Scratch with kids- or for yourself.

Virtual Field Trips and Interactive Web Quests

I'm compiling a new list of interactive multimedia resources suitable for virtual field trips and web quests. Here are a few I've recently found:

The Virtual Human Project: University of Michigan



The Virtual Human Project has been around for quite some time. What's new? A variety of browsers have been developed that allow for viewing high-resolution images. Take a look at this video demonstration:

Virtual Dissections, Labs, and Field Trips

The Cell Visualization Project


CSI: Crime Scene Investigation Museum Web Activities (Funded by the National Science Foundation)




Web Adventure

CSI: The Experience

Nobelprize.org's Educational Outreach: Multimedia Games, Experiments and Simulated Environments

I recently came across the Nobelprize.org website when I was searching for interactive learning games suitable for use on interactive whiteboards or large touch-screen displays.

For those of you who follow my blog, you'll know that I periodically look for engaging visual and multimedia activities that have potential for use in classrooms where Universal Design for Learning is practiced. Visual and multimedia forms of knowledge representation can help to reach a wide range of people, including those who have reading difficulties, language-based learning disabilities, auditory attention and memory deficits, or have autism spectrum disorders (Asperger syndrome, autism, etc.).

If you are an educator who is interested in using games in your classroom, the resources from Nobelprize.org are a good start, since background information is provided for each game.

Direct links to the games and information pages are listed below.

Info from the website:

"Nobelprize.org has a unique way of introducing the Nobel Prize that goes beyond the mere presentation of facts. These introductions, aptly called 'educational', are made in the form of games, experiments, and simulated environments ready to be explored and discovered. The productions are aimed at the young, particularly the 14-18 age groups, who may know about the Nobel Prizes and the Nobel Laureates, but often lack a deeper understanding about the Nobel Prize-awarded works."

"These educational productions do not require previous knowledge. A central thought or issue is explored during 10-20 minutes of activity, using a specific Nobel Prize-awarded work as a springboard for the whole exercise."

"The productions offer an excellent way of using the Internet for homework, or just plain, wholesome entertainment. The high level of interactivity and the sophisticated illustrations ensure an enriching time spent in front of the computer."

Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Heating Plastics Game
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/chemistry/plastics/game/index.html
Background Information and Directions
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/chemistry/plastics/index.html

What is Chirality?
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2001/illpres/game.html
Background Information and Directions
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/chemistry/chiral/index.html

Conductive Polymers- Conductive Valley Game
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/chemistry/conductive_polymers/game/index.html
Background Information and Directions
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/chemistry/conductive_polymers/index.html

Nobel Prize in Medicine

The Blood Typing Game
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/medicine/landsteiner/landsteiner.html
Background Information and Directions
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/medicine/landsteiner/index.html

The Ear Pages
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/medicine/ear/game/index.html
Background Information and Directions:
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/medicine/ear/index.html

The Immune System Defender Game
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/medicine/immunity/game/index.html
Background Information and Directions
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/medicine/immunity/index.html

Nobel Prize in Physics

The Metal Chef Show Game:
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/physics/steel/Steel1920.html
Background Information and Directions
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/physics/

Laser Challenge Game:
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/physics/laser/challenge.html
Background Information and Directions
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/physics/laser/index.html

The Recycler Game: Learn about Transistors
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/physics/transistor/recycler/index.html
Background Information and Directions
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/physics/transistor/index.html

Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences

Trade Ruler Game
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/economics/trade/game/ruler.html
Background Information and Directions
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/economics/

Nobel Peace Prize

The Peace Dove Game:
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/peace/nuclear_weapons/game.html
Background Information and Directions
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/peace/nuclear_weapons/index.html

The Red Cross Movement: Prisoners of War Game
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/peace/redcross/game.html
Background Information and Directions
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/peace/redcross/index.html

Interactive Conflict Map
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/peace/conflictmap/conflictmap.html
Background Information and Directions
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/peace/conflictmap/index.html

Nobel Prize in Literature

Lord of the Flies Game
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/literature/golding/lof.html
Background Information and Directions
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/literature/golding/index.html

Visualizing Content on the Web: Great pictures, descriptions, and links on Max Kiesler's blog

"Content Visualizations: The Next Wave of Interaction Design" is the topic of Max Kiesler's recent blog post.

Searches conducted on the Web are primarily word-based, and the same is true for searches conducted on PC's. What results is a list of phrases, which are often difficult to sort and prioritize quickly.

The increased bandwidth available on the web now allows for content that contains a range of multimedia components, such as photos and video clips. Many on-line journal articles, blog posts, and of course, information visualization websites, contain important visual-oriented information that might be missed through traditional searches.

Kiesler discusses some solutions to this problem in his post. Take a look at it soon- it contains great visualizations, as well as links to additional information and resources.

Although Keisler does not state it directly, his post makes the case for the importance visual and multimedia literacy in our society.

Note: For those of you who follow my blog, you'll know that this sort of visual approach would be a great tool in education, especially when presented on interactive large-screen displays.

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)".