GeekDad's Post: The Changing Nature of App Design for Kids (quick link)

The Changing Nature of App Design and Development for Kids
Daniel Donahoo, GEEKDAD, Wired,  1/16/12


"During 2011, I have observed a real push towards app development and digital design for children that is respectful and purposeful - not just a marketing and money making exercise." -Daniel Donahoo


I encourage you take the time to read Daniel Donahoo's thoughtful post!

RELATED
GeekDad Opinion:  We Need a Children's Apps Rating System
Daniel Donahoo, GEEKDAD, Wired, 12/11/10
Moms with Apps Workshop Summary
Moms with Apps, 12/4/11

Quick Post: Interactive 3D Plug-in for SMARTBoard (Video) Notebook

Christian Bannister's Interactive Multi-touch and Gesture-based Subcycle Project. Use your hands to shape sound, create, and manipulate music. Wow!!

I came across a link to Christian Bannister's Subcycle Labs website when I was taking a look at the Creative Applications Network website.


If you have an interest in music technology and innovative gesture/multitouch applications, you'll appreciate the details that are shared on the Subcycle website.  In the meantime, take the time to watch a few of Christian's videos.  Enjoy!


Blip Shaper Walkthrough

Blip Shaper Walkthrough from christian bannister on Vimeo.
"a) creating percussive patterns with monome b) shaping the individual sounds that make up the patterns with multitouch gestures c) recording touchscreen gestures as automation d) storing, duplicating and navigation patterns e) recording the resulting audio to a dynamic buffer f) manipulating the buffer with a multitouch cut-up approach g) visualizing everything with dual screens"
Subcycle Walkthrough

Subcycle Blip Shaper from christian bannister on Vimeo.

"a) creating percussive patterns with monome b) shaping the individual sounds that make up the patterns with multitouch gestures c) recording touchscreen gestures as automation d) storing, duplicating and navigation patterns e) recording the resulting audio to a dynamic buffer f) manipulating the buffer with a multitouch cut-up approach g) visualizing everything with dual screens"


The following information describing the Blip Shaper is from Christian's Subcycle website/blog:
"For the drum sounds I have Drumaxx running for synthesized sounds and Battery running for sampled sounds.  These are running in parallel so for each voice there is a separate patch running in each VST.  The Parameters are modified with the touchscreen independently but in all cases a single touch gesture on the X-Axis will cross fade between the sampled version of the sound and the synthesized version of the sound.  I love this because I have never seen this before and I can never decide which technique I like better.  The synthesized drums are more malleable and have more interesting parameters to play with but the sampled sounds seem more substantial.  I will post a detailed list of parameters and gestures in the future."   


Christian currently uses Max for Live (ableton), and codes with Processing/Java, using Eclipse for organization.

Autopilot - Subcycle
autopilot - subcycle labs from christian bannister on Vimeo.
"sound visualization, multi-touch interface, break beat performance engine, autopilot, spacialized sound, dsp, max/MSP, fm synthesis, sonic navigation, sound storm visualization, time machine, granular, interactive sound sculpture, joystick array, more at subcycle.org"

SOMEWHAT RELATED 
Community Core Vision
NUI Group

BTW,I'm wondering if Christian or other NUI group members would like to do something with some of my ideas that incorporate interactive music. To learn more, see my post, "It must be  Voronoi: Looking for ideas for my music+art+dance+tech dream...."
...


....

Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn - an awesome book by Cathy "HASTAC" Davidson. (Her blog is awesome, too!)

Who is Cathy Davidson
According to her most recent bio, Cathy "served from 1998 until 2006 as the first Vice Provost for Interdisciplinary Studies at Duke University, where she worked with faculty to help create many programs, including the Center for Cognitive Neuroscience and the program in Information Science + Information Studies (ISIS).  She is the co-founder of is the co-founder of Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advanced Collaboratory, HASTAC ("haystack"), a network of innovators dedicated to new forms of learning for the digital age.  She is also co-director of the $2 million annual HASTAC/John D. and Catherine T. MacAuthur Foundation Digital Media and Learning Competition."


Here is Cathy's book: Now You See It: How the Brain Science of Attention Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Learn
 

Note: I am almost finished with the book. Sadly, it went missing for several weeks, so I have about 50 more pages to read, now that it is found!   I didn't want to wait too long before writing my review, so I thought I'd highlight it here, since it will make a great read-or gift, for the holiday season!   It is well worth reading, as Cathy is a deep thinker who transcends disciplinary confines.


Here are a few Cathy Davidson's blog posts:
So What Again is HASTAC? Post #HASTAC2011 Reflections on a Network Founded on a Theory That's Practice 12/4/11
Why is the Information Age Without the Humanities Like the Industrial Revolution Without the Steam Engine? 1/24/10
Five Ways the Open Web Can Transform Higher Education
12/4/11


RELATED
HASTAC website, where you can discover a number of excellent blogs and interesting links.

Near Field Communication (NFC) for SmartPhones at the Museum of London, plus related video and NFC links

I recently came across the following video demonstrating the use of NFC (Near Field Communication) at the Museum of London.  I wouldn't be surprised if this technology takes root in a variety of applications in the very near future!


Museum of London's use of Near Field Technology with Nokia

London History Museum Adopts Technology of Future
Claire Swedberg, RFID Journal, 8/16/11
"Museum of London has installed NFC RFID tags in its two location, to provide the growing number of NFC-enabled phone users with additional exhibit information, access to social Web sites and vouchers."
Byte at the museum
Trevor, Conversations by Nokia, 9/26/11


RELATED 
Apple, Microsoft Reported to Include NFC in 2012 Smartphones
Christina Bonnington, Wired Gadget Lab, 11/22/11

Gamification and NFC top 2012 Digital Trends
Wenlei Ma, AdNews12/12/11
Microsoft: NFC already supported in Windows Phone
Gareth Beavis, TechRadar.com, 12/9/11

Near Field Communication
Android Developers
Intel joins NFC Forum board
Telcompaper, 12/8/11

Join the NFC (Near Field Communication) Revolution Today
NFC Data Inc, Sacramento Bee, 11/30/11
"Pledge support. Set a new mobile wallet standard for security, convenience, and affordability! Think outside the phone!"

NFC Near Field Communication Tutorial
Radio-Electronics.com
"A summary overview or tutorial of Near Field Communications, detailing what is NFC and its technology"
Vending Machines Now Take Google Wallet Payments

-Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch

Starbucks Cup Magic: Augmented Reality App for iPhone and Android!

The app was developed by Blast Radius.  FYI, Blast Radius is hiring.

"Blast Radius is a global agency that takes a strategic approach to tackling the complex issues of growing brand and revenue in a digitally connected world."


For more information, tak a look at the Starbucks Cup Magic iTunes preview.


Thanks to Ajit Jaokar for the link!

Revisiting Good Blogs: Nathan Yau's Flowing Data

One of my favorite blogs is FlowingData, Nathan Yau's labor of love for the past several years. Nathan is a UCLA PhD candidate in statistics with a focus in data visualization.  He shares interesting tidbits of information on his blog, including those that relate to his main interests, social data visualization, self-surveillance, and data for non-professionals.  He supports accessible and useful data visualization.


Nathan is the author of  the book, Visualize This: The FlowingData Guide to Design, Visualization, and Statistics,  nicely explained in the video below:

Is the answer Voronoi? Looking for possible solutions to an art+dance+music+tech idea from a recurring dream....

If you are a long-time reader of this blog, you probably know that I sometimes have some unusual dreams about technology.  I don't blog about my dreams very often, but last night, I had another technology dream, a continuation of a dream I had one night last week.  
Voronoi Diagram (Wikipedia)

I'm pretty sure that the last two dreams were sparked by playing an online interactive demonstration of a Voronoi application before going to sleep one night, and also reading an article about "extracting ordered patterns from a triangular mesh surface" in the Novemeber/December IEEE Potentials magazine before turning in last night. 

The dance probably was influenced by my recent viewing of the North Carolina Dance Theater's performance of Innovative Works with my mom, someone who encouraged my  study of music, art, and dance at an early age.

Some of my tech dreams are sort of...practical. For example, in one recurring dream, I find myself coding for a flexible mesh/grid application. Sometimes the mesh/grid has something to do with wireless sensor networks on curved terrain, perhaps related to something like the Smart Grid, and sometimes I find myself working on an application that analyzes streaming data from a variety of sources, for security prediction purposes.  At other times, I'm coding for something more artistic, my preference.

Last night, my dream focused on creating a flexible mesh fabric that used in a multimedia dance/graphic arts/music performance.  I was coding for this performance using a Voronoi-like algorithm.


This is the best I can do to explain this: The fabric is carried by the dancers, and is both reactive and generative. In essence, the fabric is intertwined/embedded in the dance, the music, and the graphics. In my dream, everything looked/sounded/felt awesome and otherworldly, and the music that merged and morphed during the dance was so beautiful, not only the melodies, but the sounds.  (In a previous dream, the mesh contained a "nanotechnology" component, but I'll save that quest for the future.)


I thought I'd look at some of my web book marks and search a bit more for information related to this topic.  For now, here is the "brain dump".  I have more to add to this post, and plan to port it to a reference page for this blog in the future.  I hope that this post will be useful to some of my art/music/dance/tech readers!

RELATED AND SOMEWHAT RELATED


Update:  Right after uploaded this post, I came across a link to a WebGL demo for a 3D music video of pop singer Ellie Goulding's song, 'Lights', by HelloJoy.   Visitors to the webpage can click to interact with the environment. If you keep the button pressed, you fly faster.  If you tweet the link, you'll see your name crop up as you fly around in the soundspace.  For more information about the making of 'Lights' - take a look at  Behind the scenes of 'Lights": the latest WebGL sensation!  (Carlos Ulloa, 11/9/11)


After I watched the 'Lights' video, I recalled Radiohead's 'House of Cards' video, which I wrote about back in 2008: 
 "We were rolling computers all day"...The Making of Radioheads House of Cards using imaging and info visualization software.   The process behind the making of the House of Cards video was described in detail in Chapter 10 of the book, Beautiful Data.

Bradley, E., Capps, D., Luftig, J, & Stuart, J.M. Toward Stylistic Consonance in Human Movement Synthesis.(pdf)  The Open Artificial Intelligence Journal, 2010, 4, 1-19
Bradley, E., Stuart, J.  Using Chaos to Generate Variations on Movement Sequences (pdf) Chaos, 8:800-807 (1998)
Bradley, E., Stuart, J.  Learning the Grammar of Dance.(pdf)  Proceedings Fifteenth International Conference on Machine Learning, Madicson, WI, 1998
E. Bradley, D. Capps, and A. Rubin, "Can computers learn to dance?," Proceedings International Dance & Technology (IDAT), Tempe AZ, Feb 1999.
Chaotic Dance: Using mathematics to generate choreographic variations
Schedl, M., Hoglinger, C., Knees, P. Large-Scale Music Exploration in Hierarchically Organized Landscapes Using Prototypicality Information (pdf)
Fournel, N. Procedural Audio for Video Games: Are we there yet? (pdf) GDC 2010


Voronoi Cells, created by Nathan Nifong.  A version of this interactive work was used in a DanceDraw performance

Patterns in the Noise (Nathan Nifong's site - FYI, Nathan worked with Celine Latulipe with the Dance.Draw project while completing his bachelor degree in computer science at UNC-Charlotte)
Voronoi Dance (Christian Gross, using OpenFramework)
Voronoi art: Slow Trip (Oktalist/Mat)


The above video, by Mat/Oktal, was inspired by his viewing of Thomas Ruff's Substrat images. 
Scott Snibbe Studio (Intearctive art, music, and animation for iPhone, iPad, iPod, and Mac)

Interactive Voronoi Diagram Generator with WebGL (Alex Beutel)
 
The above video was found in Alex Beutel's blog post, "Interactive Voronoi Diagrams with WebGL"

Posts about DanceDraw and related work at UNC-Charlotte:
News from the HCI lab at UNC-Charlotte- Creative Interactions (Videos)
Exploring the Design Space in Technology-Augmented Dance at CHI 2010:  Celine Latulipe's team from UNC-Charlotte
Interactive Surveillance:  Live digital art installation by Annabel Manning and Celine Latulipe

SIGCHI  Digital Arts and Interaction Community:  Building Bridges
The Interdisciplinary World of Dance and Interactive Technology

HTML5Voronoi  (HTML5Code website)

HTML5 Voronoi, Live Version
Update to code to compute Voronoi diagrams (Raymond Hill, 5/22/11)
William Forsythe's "Synchronous Objects-One Flat Thing, Reproduced" - Multidisciplinary online interactive project: Translating choreography into new forms.
BCS HCI 2011 Workshop: When Words Fail:  What can Music Interaction tell us about HCI?
Woven Sound (Alex McLean)
Real DJs Code Live (Robert Andrews, Wired, 7/3/06)
Visualization of Live Code (Alex McLean)
Voronoi diagrams of music (pdf)  (Alex McLean, 2006)
WebGL
Sylvester: Vector and Matrix Math for JavaScript
Generative Art Links (Mikael Hvidtfeldt Christensen)
Schacher, J.C. Motion to Gesture to Sound:  Mapping For Interactive Dance (pdf) Proceedings of the 2010 Conference on New Interfaces for Musical Expression (NIME 2010), Sydney, Australia
Code & Form:  Computational Aesthetics (Marius Watz)
Werghi, N. Extracting ordered patterns from a triangular mesh surface.  IEEE Potentials, Nov/Dec 2011
Last night I dreamt about haptic touch-screen overlays


Hyun-Seok Kim's Voronoi Yacht

Building Interfaces for the New Decade: Conference at the Tech Museum, San Jose, California

Here is information about a day-long conference that I'm sure will be well worth attending:

November 15, 2011 (Tuesday)

Building Interfaces for the New Decade Conference

The Tech Museum

San Jose, California

If you can't make it to San Jose, the conference can be attended "virtually".  You can register for the conference via the EventBright website.


Here is the list of speakers and presentations for the conference:


Tamara Schwarz, Senior Manager of Experience Design, Chabot Space & Science Center
"RFID-enabled Interactive Exhibits, or... What's a warehouse inventory management technology doing in an interactive science center?"
Christopher Stapleton, Creative Venture Catalyst, Simiosys
"The Phydgital InterSpace -The Next Generation of Museum User Experience and Workshop: Experiential Makeover for Learning"
Jim Spadaccini, Director, Ideum; Principal Investigator, Open Exhibits
"Open Exhibits - Community Software for Multi-touch and Motion Recognition"
Rick Ernst, Lead Designer, Ogmento
"How to get People off the Couch and Interact with the World with Augmented Reality Games"
Bob Ketner, Curator, The Tech Test Zone
"The Tech Virtual and The Tech Test Zone Open Platforms"
John MacDuffie Woodburn, Co-Developer, Pixel, and Graduate Student, University of the Arts, PA, & Matt Miller, Co-Developer, Pixel
"Pixel - Using Eye Tracking to Engage and Educate Your Audience"
Ross Smith, Ph.D, Deputy Director, Wearable Computer Laboratory, University of South Australia
"Bringing Fingertip Sculpting Techniques to the Digital Artist"

Below is an excerpt from the conference website:
"Join us on Tuesday, November 15, 2011 for a gathering of the most innovative developers of new interactive technologies at The Tech Museum's Test Zone 2011...Connect with entrepreneurs, developers, and researchers working on cutting-edge interfaces such as:
Augmented Reality
Context Aware 
Deformable Surfaces
Eye Tracking
Feedback
Gestural Interfaces
Gigapixel Images
Motion Sensing
Multi-touch
Natural User Interfaces
RFID
Smart Museum Systems
Tablet Computers
Ubiquitous Media 


Find out how museums and other public-space designers can use these technologies to enhance visitor learning and experience. Experience the interactives firsthand at the opening of The Tech Test Zone Gallery, a new gallery dedicated to temporary exhibitions of prototypes from corporate, academic, and nonprofit partners."

RELATED

About the Tech Museum:

"The Tech Museum is a hands-on technology and science museum for people of all ages and backgrounds. The museum-located in the Capital of Silicon Valley -is a non-profit learning resource established to engage people in exploring and experiencing technologies affecting their lives. Through programs such as The Tech Challenge presented by Cisco, our annual team design competition for youth, and internationally renowned programs such as The Tech Awards presented by Applied Materials, Inc., The Tech Museum celebrates the present and encourages the development of innovative ideas for a more promising future." -Tech Museum YouTube Channel

Hack the Future Day at the Tech Museum

GOOGLE CHROME WEB STORE: All sorts of apps, educational and more!

 I'll have to admit, I no longer consider myself an early adopter.  I put off exploring the Google Chrome Web Store until.... today.  Most of my recent explorations have centered on discovering great apps for my iDevices, but since I'm a cross-platform, cross-device, transmedia type of person, I could not neglect the world of interactive web apps!


Here is a screen shot of the educational web apps from the Google Chrome Web Store:


























After you select a few web apps, you can access them from your Chrome browser by selecting a new tab or new window.  The screen shot below shows the apps I've currently chosen to explore:

I have an HP TouchSmart, and I found that many of the web app worked out OK with touch interaction, even 3D  "rotate and pan".  My hunch is that many of the web apps will work fine on an interactive whiteboard. 


I took a quick look at the MeeGenius! Children's Books interactive web app and was pleasantly surprised.  This web app is a talking book that highlights each word as it is spoken. A human voice is used for the narration.

I'm looking forward to getting into work early on Monday to see what web apps work well on the SMARTboard!

RELATED and SOMEWHAT RELATED
Free Education Apps from Google's New Chrome Web Store
The Yellin Center for Mind, Brain, and Education, 2/9/11
Below is a list of educational Chrome apps recommended in the above linked post:

• Planetarium –an interactive star map for kids (or adults!) interested in astronomy
• Google Books – millions of free e-books in a plethora of subjects
• 3DTin – A realistic 3D model-maker
• MathBoard – a math learning tool appropriate for elementary and kindergarten students
• MeeGenuis! Children’s Books – personalized, “enhanced” web books for younger students
• LucidChart – a collaborative diagramming tool, not unlike Inspiration or MindManager
• Picnik Photo Editor – web-based photo manipulation a la Photoshop
• 20 Things I Learned about Browsers & the Web – a great introduction to how the internet works
• Springpad – note-taking tool that can incorporate assignments, photos, to-do lists, etc.
• Bomomo – an innovative illustration and drawing tool
• A variety of flashcard-based apps which can aid memory, vocabulary, math skills and more

Plinks and Tonecraft - two music tools for Chrome
Danny Nicholson, The Whiteboard Blog  10/11/11
Dinahmoe Labs  (creators of Plink and Tonecraft)
The Whiteboard Blog

Hacking Autism: Touch Technology for Young People with Autism Spectrum Disorders (October 11 is the Hackathon!)

October 11, 2011 is a special day. A number of software programmers will be working to develop "innovative, touch-enabled applications for the autism cimmunity and make this software available for free on HackingAutism.org." Take a moment to watch the following video clip, and then explore the Hacking Autism website!
"When touch-enabled computing was introduced to the world, no one could have anticipated that this technology might help open up a new world of communication, learning and social possibilities for autistic children. Yet it has. Hacking Autism is a story of technology and hope and the difference it's making in the lives of some people who need it most.Hacking Autism doesn't seek to cure autism, but rather it aims to facilitate and accelerate technology-based ideas to help give those with autism a voice." -hackingautism.org
Touch technology + people with autism spectrum disorders = 
One of the reasons why I returned to school to take computer courses and explore natural user interfaces and interaction.   

RELATED
Interacting with HP TouchSmart Notes: Photo, Video, Audio and More
Interactive Visual Supports for Children with Autism:  Gillian Hayes' Work at the Social and Technology Action Research Group
Open Source Multi-touch Software for Young People with Autism
Interactive iPad Apps for Kids with Autism: Could some of these be transformed for multi-touch tabletop activities?
iPad Apps: Supporting Communication for Young People with Autism (links to Moms with Apps)
Reflections about interactivity in my present world (Aug. 2010)
Interactive Multi-touch for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders: Research and Apps by Juan Paplo Hourcade, Thomas Hanson, and Natasha Bullock-Rest, University of Iowa
Open Autism Software "Where Social Skills and Interest in Computers Meet"
Sen H. Hirano, Michael T. Yeganyan, Gabriela Marcu, David H. Nguyen, Lou Anne Boyd, Gillian R. Hayes vSked: Evaluation of a System to Support Classroom Activities for Children with Autism. In CHI 2010 (Atlanta, GA, 2010).(pdf) Gillian R. Hayes, Sen Hirano, Gabriela 
Marcu, Mohamad Monibi, David H. Nguyen, and Michael Yeganyan. Interactive Visual Supports for Children with Autism. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing. April 2010. 
Monibi, M., Hayes, G.R. Mocotos: Mobile Communication Tools for Children with Special Needs. Proceedings of Interaction Design and Children, pages 121-124 ACM, 2008 
SOMEWHAT RELATED
Hope Technology School
Do2Learn JobTips
Autism Research Group at Georgia Tech
Immersive Cocoon Interaction"  "It's people who are now the interface"
Today I hooked up a Will to the IWB in the school's therapy room.  Next, a Kinect? 
(IWBs + Games + Social Skills)

Update, plus iGaze app by Dunedin Multimedia for use during social skills group activities

So what am I up to now?  


I'd like to share with my readers that I've decided to continue in my present position as a school psychologist, while still devoting a portion of my free time to technology. From time-to-time I think deep thoughts about usability, accessibility,  and UX/Interaction related to off-the-desktop interactive multimedia applications running on screens of all sizes.  I'm hoping to create a few multimedia experiments using HTML5 and JavaScript, and explore jQuery if and when I can find the time!  


For the present school year, my main school is a program for students with more significant disabilities, including autism spectrum disorders.  My second school is a magnet high school for technology and the arts,  located on the same campus.  I also consult throughout the district on cases involving students who have suffered traumatic brain injuries, as well as students who have multiple disabilities.  I am thankful that I have a job in a school district that values 21st Century technology.  


I'm looking forward to another technology-rich school year.  I've spent some of the time I usually devote to blogging devoted exploring iPad apps instead.  Since I'm new to the world of iPads, I'm still in discovery mode.  What an adventure!   


There are plenty of educational apps out there, and many of them are suitable for students with special needs.  On the other hand, there is much room for improvement - across all iPad app categories.  Since there is very little research about what makes up a killer app- or suite of apps- for students with special needs, experimenting with  iPad apps is uncharted territory. 

I made the decision to bring my personal iPad2 to work after I discovered a number of apps that I thought would be useful in my work as a school psychologist with students who have special needs, including autism spectrum disorders.  

One of my intervention themes this year focuses on social skills.   This is especially important for students who participate in our schools community-based job training program.  I'm using some content from Unique Learning's transition materials,  as well as on-line activities from Do2Learn's JobTips website, because my aim is to facilitate social skills that will be useful in a variety of job and community settings.   


Although my main technology tool for working with groups is the SMARTBoard,  I've found that using a combination of interactive whiteboard and iPad activities to be especially effective.  I'm paving the way for more role-play activities in the future, and attempting to use technology to my advantage.


This past week, I used the iGaze app, created by Dunedin Multimedia, to help a group of high-school level students practice establishing and maintaining eye gaze, something that is difficult for most of them to demonstrate "in-person".  I was amazed.  Each student was excited to take his or her turn.  Even more amazing?  When each student took a turn, the other students looked at their eyes and faces.  No one rocked or "stimmed".  No one made noises.  I observed several instances of joint attention, much to my delight.   

Below is a video from Dunedin Multimedia's YouTube channel that is similar to what the students viewed during their group activity:

Here is some information from Dunedin Multimedia about the iGaze app:

"Eye contact is important to communication and social development, and yet the impaired ability to make and maintain eye contact is one of the most striking aspects of autism. iGaze is an eye contact simulator that can help to build confidence in using this important means of nonverbal social communication.  The app also contains information on eye contact and eye gaze, with links to relevant research."

During the social skills activity involving the iGaze app,  I used the SMART Board to display a large picture of a boss and a worker standing face to face, making eye contact, engaged in conversation.  The picture served as an anchor to remind the students of pictures and videos they'd previously viewed that illustrated the concept of face-to-face interaction and the importance of establishing eye-contact with others from time-to-time.


I'm hoping I will be able to access the YouTube videos from Dunedin so I can use them on the SMART Board. It will be interesting to see how this plays out!   I'm also planning to take a closer look at Dunedin Multimedia's emotion x app for the iPad.


RELATED 
Screen-shot of iGaze for the iPad Dunedin:

SOMEWHAT RELATED
The SMART Table at my school was updated today - I'm looking forward to using it for some group activities, now that it is back in working order and has new applications loaded up and ready to go!


If you are interested in learning more about technology related to students with special needs, be sure to check out Kate Ahern's blog, Teaching Learners with Multiple Special Needs

Kate's post about the features of Unique Learning Systems.


Upcoming:  more about tablets, interview with folks from Stantum, social-skills game-in-progress.....large displays in public spaces update....

Contre Jour: My current favorite iPad game - a good example of touchable, movable multimedia

Contre Jour is a game developed for the iPad by Chillingo.  It is my current favorite game, partly because it is a great example of how the power of a touch interface can be harnessed.

The beauty of this game is that it provides a natural means of scaffolding how the tools are used, so that as the player progresses, the learning curve feels almost effortless. In the game, the character is controlled through the player's ability to manipulate and move the environment. The underlying physics is intriguing.

Contre Jour was  inspired by children's book, Little Prince, but in this game, the "prince" is a cute little eyeball character.   In the game,  each chapter/world has a musical theme, and the music integrates with the game's visuals and "movements"  to provide a relaxing ambience.

To learn more, take a look at the following video about Contre Jour.  I'm happy I spent a few dollars to buy the app!



I'll post more about this game as I play it!

MULTITOUCH NEWS: NUITEQ's interactive display at a business park; Innovation Now's multitouch anatomy application

Multitouch Display for Business Science Park Aurorum, by NUITEQ

"NUITEQ developed a customized multi-touch software solution for Corporate Reception / Lounge Areas for Business Science Park Aurorum in Luleå, based on the award-winning Snowflake Suite framework. In addition to the software, NUITEQ delivered and installed a 32 touch points multitouch dreaMTouch LCD from Germany based Elektrosil."-NUITEQ

Multitouch Solution for Corporate Reception/Lounge areas based on Snowflake Framework

Harry van der Veen, Multitouch Blog, 8/19/11

Multitouch Anatomy by Innovation Now

"Virtual anatomy surface computer in the shape of autopsy table that show and enable the user to use hand gestures to do the anatomy process virtually." -Innovation Now

Homam Alghorani, CEO, Innovation Now Sdn Bhd

Designing Culture: Investigating the Link Between Technology and Culture, an interactive transmedia project by Anne Balsamo

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know that I use it as an on-line filing cabinet. When I learned about Anne Balsamo's recently published book, part of a larger interactive transmedia project, I decided that it warranted more than a "plug" and a quick link.


It warranted a shrine.
For this reason, I've embedded a number of videos and presentations from the project's website, along with a host of links.  Prepare to spend some time exploring her work over time!  It is food for reflection.


DESIGNING CULTURE     "Investigating the link between technology and culture, this transmedia project is realized as a print book, a dvd, and this interactive flash website ." -Designing Culture


"Anne Balsamo is a Professor of Communication in the Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism and of Interactive Media in the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California. She is a co-founder of Onomy Labs, a Silicon Valley technology design and fabrication company that builds cultural technologies. Previously, she was a member of RED (Research on Experimental Documents), a collaborative research group at Xerox PARC that created experimental reading devices and new media genres. She is the author of Technologies of the Gendered Body: Reading Cyborg Women, also published by Duke University Press." -Designing Culture


Video Overview:

Designing Culture: the Technological Imagination at Work from Anne Balsamo on Vimeo.


BOOK
Designing Culture: The Technological Imagination at Work
Anne Balsamo, Duke University Press, 2011


BLOG: Designing Culture


DVD (packaged with the book)
Women of the World Talk Back: Gendering the Technological Imagination


PUBLIC INTERACTIVE WALLS: Designing Technological Literacies -Interactive Wall Books "Interactive Wall Books are large-scale dynamic mixed-media documents"
Here are a few links to online versions of the wall books for your convenience: Episodes in the History of Reading, Part 1     Episodes in the History of Reading, Part II  Episodes in the History of Reading, Part 3     Deslizate En El Tiempo: Epsodios en la Historia de la Communicacion (Developed for the Children's Museum of Mexico City)  Science for All Ages

XFR: EXPERIMENTS IN THE FUTURE OF READING  A museum exhibit.
(The above link will take you to the Onomy website's version of the exhibit. The project version can be found on the Designing Culture website.)


MAPS: Mapping the Technological Imagination Spatial Documents.
Learning to Love The Questions - an interactive semantac map, for the online journal VECTORS
Where is the Museum? Mapping the Distributed Museum -presentation at Museums and the Web 2011
Ways of the Hand: Tinkering in the Digital Age -presentation at DIY Citizenship: Critical Making and Social Media conference, 2010
Working the Paradigm Shift: The Cultural Work of the Digital Humanities - presentation at the Digital Arts Conference, 2008


VIDEOS
Tools for the Asking

Anne Balsamo HASTAC Presentation 4_16_2010 from IML @ USC on Vimeo.


Gendering the Technological How a Robot Got its Groove


Cool Fusion: Designing Culture - Working the Paradigm Shift



RELATED
Reviews of Designing Culture by Lawrence Grossberg, Cathy N. Davidson, and John Seely Brown (Amazon.com site for the book)
Balsamo's New Book Details Technological Imagination at Work
Annenberg News, 8/10/11
HASTAC: Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Advance Collaboratory


Anne Balsamo worked on the following project:
Tangible Interface for Viewing the Aids Quilt

"This project will develop an application that enables collaborative browsing of a database of images of panels of The AIDS Memorial Quilt that have been “virtually stitched together.”  The application will be used with Onomy Lab’s Tilty Table, a tangible interactive device that serves as a display surface for large-scaled images." -(info from Anne Balsamo's blog)

GoPro Wearable (extreme) Sports Camera: I Want One! (video)

I'd love to have a GoPro wearable HD camera for creating immersive multimedia content. The only problem is that I'd have to take up extreme sports as a hobby if I wanted to do my own videography. 


Take a look at the promo video from the GoPro website - best viewed in full-screen:


I see great possibilities for interactive, "touchable" multimedia content using video captured in this manner!


If you ever wondered what NYC looks like from the POV of a fast and furious skateboard, take a look at this video, "Skate Through NYC With A GoPro":


Thanks to Nat Torkington for sharing the video and link in Google+!


RELATED
Blog Post: Skate Through NYC with a GoPro
Mareadyphotography Blog

NodeBeat HD 1.5 Upgrade, an iOS Music Sequencer: Fun to Play on my iPad!

NodeBeat HD 1.5 - iOS Music Sequencer from AffinityBlue on Vimeo.

Below is information about NodeBeat 1.5 from the Vimeo website:


"This is a brief video showcasing some of the new features in NodeBeat HD 1.5. The same features will be coming to the iPhone/iPod Touch version of NodeBeat in the coming weeks."


"New Features Include:


- Entirely new user interface design
- Drag and drop new nodes
- Drum Generator Node
- Sine, Triangle, Sawtooth, and Square waveform selection
- Tempo and BPM controls
- Compress recording for faster e-mailing of recordings
- Create ringtones from recordings
- Sleep Timer. Now you can fall asleep to NodeBeat
- Shake to Clear Screen
- 5 Finger multitouch reset all"
----------------------------------------------
"NodeBeat is an experimental node-based audio sequencer and generative music application for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad."


(Just 99 cents!)


RELATED
NodeBeat website


NodeBeat iTunes Preview

Play and Experiment with Music on your iPad/Pod/Phone with NodeBeat iOS Music Sequencer by Affinity Blue by Seth Sandler and Justin Windle  (previous post)

NodeBeat: Create and View Musical Soundscapes
iPad Creative, 5/31/11

Seth Sandler     Justin Windle

Baby playing NodeBeat 1.0 -using fingers and toes: