Multi-touch Crayon Physics

Also posted on the TSHWI blog:
Watch how you can draw simple shapes that can instantly turn into a game!


Multitouch Crayon Physics from multitouch-barcelona on Vimeo.
For a better version of this video, see http://www.vimeo.com/980528 For more information, see the RXSurface blog post. On May 18, Multi touch crayon physics will be offered as an alphabeta opensource! The people behind RXSurface are members of the Natural User Interface (NUI) group:
"Natural User Interface or ~ NUI Group is an interactive media group researching and creating open source machine sensing techniques to benefit artistic and educational applications."

Virtual Math Museum: Online Math Art:

The Virtual Math Museum has a wealth of visual information useful to those in and outside the field of math. The mathmatical art section has links to the works of Paul Nylander, George Hart, Titia van Beugen, Brian Johnston, Bathsheba Grossman, Jos Leys, Paul Bourke, Jean Consant, and Luc Benard.

Each of the Math Artist pages provides information about the artist that in my opinion, would be useful to teachers who aim to encourage students to consider pursuing STEM-related careers. (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math).

The content of the entire Virtual Math Museum website is impressive on a large display or interactive whiteboard!


FYI:

"3D-XplorMath Home Page

The group in charge of the 3D-XplorMath software development project and the related Virtual Mathematics Museum website project is the 3DXM Consortium, an international volunteer group of mathematicians. The Consortium gratefully acknowledges ongoing support for these projects by The National Science Foundation (DUE Award #0514781) and is grateful to the Mathematics Department of The University of California at Irvine for hosting the 3D-XplorMath and Virtual Mathematical Museum websites."

Paul Bourke's Experiments in Interactive Visual Immersion in Second Life - and more....

"Preprocessed spherical projections from inside a crystal including the Hershfield surface"
Evaluating Second Life as a Collaborative Tool for Scientific Visualization
http://local.wasp.uwa.edu.au/~pbourke/papers/cgat08/

I thought I'd devote a post to Paul Bourke's exciting work in the area of what I call "interactive visual immersion".

According to a bio on a math art website, Paul's working life "has revolved around high performance computing and computer graphics, in particular scientific visualisation: the use of computer graphics to represent scientific data with the aim of enhancing understanding of the underlying structure and processes." Paul is also interested in the use of "novel display technologies that can further enhance the understanding of large and complicated geometric datasets...These engage capabilities of our visual system not exploited by traditional computer displays..."

Paul recently participated in the the Computer Games, Multimedia & and Allied Technology 08: International Conference & Industry Symposium on Computer Games; Animation, Multimedia, IPTV & Edutainment. (CGAT'08, Singapore, April 28-30)

The above picture is from his paper, Evaluating Second Life as a Tool for Collaborative Scientific Visualization. (pdf), taken from Paul's webpage, where you can find a link to the slides from his talk.

Bourke points out that there are few software tools available that support shared, remote collaborative scientific visualization. What is available is expensive, exploratory, and/or difficult to install and operate. Bourke proposes that Second Life might prove to be a useful tool for collaborative SciViz, despite some current limitations. Second Life is a cross-platform 3D environment that was designed specifically for interaction between many people, and it allows for texture mapping, which is a plus for visualization work. Burke notes that there are limitations, such as Second Life's low geometric complexity.

Paul Bourke's website includes a page that lists all of his papers, articles, and seminars, with impressive visuals alongside each entry. Since I recently completed a visualization class and also gave a short presentation about accessible games for health, I found many of Bourke's papers intriguing:

Vertical dome (iDome): Visualisation and Navigable movies
Visualization for scientists, museums, public outreach, and education
Immersive environments and applications to gaming
Exploiting our sense of touch for scientific visualization.
Tactile Visualization: Feel your data!
Apple technology powering displays that engage the human visual system
iDome and digital projection into hemispherical domes

Take the time to explore Bourke's entire website. Look at his texture library and his "other" section!

FYI: Here is a link to the CGAT'08 list of speakers, complete with bios and abstracts.

Seth Sandler's "How to Make a Cheap Multitouch Pad" YouTube video is going viral...

Seth Sandler, a member of the NUI group, has worked very hard at putting together low-cost multi-touch screen surfaces. Seth has a background in music, so his projects focus on interactive music applications. Over 315,000 people watched this video within the week that it was uploaded.

Thanks Seth, for sharing this vision with the world!



Seth's AudioTouch Blog: "An Interactive Multi-user, Multi-touch Musical Table and More"

Hint for high school teachers: This sort of thing would be a great project for an after-school technology club!

Two Links: Urban Screens, Urban Interfaces, Digital Media, and the Arts in Social-Public Spaces; Edward Tufte is a Smart Guy

Here are two links that I think you'll find interesting:

My post on the TSHWI blog, reflecting on interdisciplinary research and topics related to ubiquitous computing and large interactive displays in public spaces:

Urban Screens, Urban Interfaces, Digital Media, and the Arts in Social-Public Spaces


Bill Mackenty's reflections about workshop he attended that was led by Edward Tufte, known for his insights about the presentation of information graphics:

Edward Tufte is a Smart Guy

Cross post via Tech Psych: Games for Health conference

I recently presented at the Games for Health conference in Baltimore, Maryland. The attendees and presenters at the conference came from a variety of fields- game development, education, occupational and physical therapy, health, bio-mechanical engineering, media arts, and more, all interested in sharing ideas about using game, simulations, and virtual worlds to improve health.

Many of the topics covered during the recent Games for Health conference apply to K-12 settings. If you think about it, many children and teens are at risk for health problems that will adversely impact their lives as adults. If we can provide a means for young people to develop healthy behaviors and attitudes at an early age, we will help to ensure healthy futures, for individuals and communities alike.

If you have a little time, you can listen to the overview provided in an audiocast consisting of interviews with Ben Sawyer and others involved with the conference.

My presentation slides - Game Accessibility and Health Education in K-12 Settings - from the pre-conference, are posted SlideShare, where you can find slides from other presentations on the Games for Health group section.

You can find more information on the Pioneer Portfolio of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation website, including a section about Games for Health.

Edutopia Video: No Gamer Left Behind: Virtual Learning Goes to the Next Level

The following video is from from Edutopia, part of the George Lucus Educational Foundation. It provides a good overview of the at the use of virtual worlds and interactive games in education. Some high schools provide virtual labs to teach science concepts, and others offer courses that teach students how to create games and virtual environments, and in turn, these student learn art, story-telling, math and computer programming concepts.

Teachers report that incorporating virtual learning in their classrooms increases student engagement and academic performance.

This video clip features Doug Whitley,from Kurt Squires and William Shafer, from the University of Wisconsin, students from the Digital Media program at McKinley High School (Washington D.C., and Eric Johnson, from Lucas Arts.



According to Mark Prensky, there are many barriers to the use of simulations and games in education, inlcuding the lack of money, time, and adequate technology. In addition, many educators are not aware of the power that interactive simulations hold for their students.

Oakland Blues: Virtual Preservation of Seventh Street's Jazz Scene, more about educational gaming MMO's

I recently attended the Visualization in the World Symposium sponsored by the Charlotte Visualization Center at UNC-Charlotte. I enjoyed the symposium because the presentations were interdisciplinary, drawing from fields such as psychology, architecture, journalism, scientific visualization, data visualization, and photography.

The audience consisted of people from a variety of disciplines. This added dimension to the discussions after each presentation, eliminating the "birds of a feather" feeling experienced at conferences that are narrow in focus.

Yahuda Kalay's presention:



One of the presentations was about the on-line interactive virtual preservation of Oakland California's 7th Street from the 1950's, a center of jazz at the time. The project was the result of collaboration between the Architecture and Journalism departments at the University of California-Berkeley. Preserving cultural heritage is important, but proves to be a difficult task. Digital media can assist with this problem through the use of modeling and visualization.

Because the project was designed to be used by people via the interent, decisions needed to be made regarding the quality of the graphics, since many users would not have high-end graphics cards installed in their computers. Garage Game's Torque engine was used to develop the game, because it contained a physics engine and also supported players and non-player characters (NPC), or virtual characters. The NPC's were programmed to provide interactive dialogues with players, and each NPC's dialogue contributed to telling the story of 7th street.

Below is the course description from a recent journalism class at UC-Berkeley that used the Oakland's 7th street videogame for many of the course assignments. It looks like it could be easily adapted for high school courses:

"J-298: Oakland Jazz and Blues (Spring 2008)This class is using a video game program to recreate and tell the story of the jazz and blues club scene on Oakland's 7th Street during its heyday in the 1940s and 1950s - a remarkable part of the city's history that has been all but lost to urban decay. An eight-block stretch of 7th Street is being recreated as a virtual world, which people can access over the Internet and then adopt avatar figures to walk up and down the streets, enter the clubs, listen to the music of the era and interact with other people logged onto the site. The virtual reality program used in the class was developed by the UC Berkeley Architecture Department, which is collaborating on this year-long project. This class involves reporting and research on the stories of the clubs and other establishments on 7th Street, the musicians and other characters who frequented the scene, the music played in the clubs, and the redevelopment projects that destroyed the area. And the class will work on how to tell the story of the clubs and the history of the area using video game narratives."

Further Reading:

OAKLAND BLUES. Virtual Preservation of Seventh Street's 1950s Jazz Scene by Yehuda E. Kalay and Paul Grabowicz, Center for New Media, University of California, Berkeley, USA JISC 3DVisA Bulletin, Issue 1, September 2006

RELATED: New Media Consortium

The New Media Consortium's overview of interactive virtual worlds used for education provides information about a variety of projects and the time-frames in which they will become fully implemented. It also provides an overview of massively multiplayer educational gaming, with resources for further reading. The NASA MMO project to support STEM learning is an example massively multi-player educational gaming.

I am excited about these innovations, since they will provide visual learners with educational opportunities that are suited to how they learn.

NASA's promotion of MMO games to support STEM learning; Vision-play's SpaceStationSim game; EASe games for children with autism spectrum disorders

NASA is looking for a partner to develop a massively multiplayer online learning game to support education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, known as STEM. The following is a quote from NASA's website regarding the advantages of providing learners with MMO games:

"Persistent immersive synthetic environments in the form of massive multiplayer online gaming and social virtual world, initially popularized as gaming and social settings, are now finding growing interest as education and training venues. There is increasing recognition that these synthetic environments can serve as powerful “hands-on” tools for teaching a range of complex subjects. Virtual worlds with scientifically accurate simulations could permit learners to tinker with chemical reactions in living cells, practice operating and repairing expensive equipment, and experience microgravity, making it easier to grasp complex concepts and transfer this understanding quickly to practical problems. MMOs help players develop and exercise a skill set closely matching the thinking, planning, learning, and technical skills increasingly in demand by employers. These skills include strategic thinking, interpretative analysis, problem solving, plan formulation and execution, team-building and cooperation, and adaptation to rapid change."

NASA's Request for Proposals document outlines the specifics for game developers who'd like to partner with NASA on this project. The MMO's target audience is teens in highschool and above, with adoption expected at the middle school level. Partners should be know how to make the game accessible to people with disabilities.

SPACESTATIONSIM

If you like games about space, or know young people who do, you might be interested in Vision-play's SpaceStationSim, which was developed in collaboration with NASA. For more information, you can visit the Vision-play website, where you can find an on-line manual for the game, screenshots, and a free demo.

EASe GAMES

Vision-Play also created four games for use with children who have autism spectrum disorders, building on the EASe CD series used by some occupational therapists to help with auditory hypersensitivity, hyperacusis, central auditory processing disorders, or sensory integration disorders. The EASe games "not only fun to play, but stimulate a child’s auditory/vestibular and visual/balance sensory inputs, and help teach them to manage noise and regulate balance." EASe games allow for three speed settings. It is not clear if they are switch-adaptible.

It will be interesting to see how these games play out in school settings!

Learning to Think Spatially: GIS as a Support System in the K-12 Curriculum: Free Online Book

I came across a link to an interesting book on Susana Valica's blog. Susana's master's thesis focuses on human-computer interaction and geographic information systems.

The book, Learning to Think Spatially: GIS as a Support System in the K-12 Curriculum is available for partial viewing online. This book specifically addresses topics useful to educators who are interested in visual thinking and learning and would like to improve their own visual skills, develop a better understanding of human spatial cognition, and share this with young people.

According to the authors, "..spatial thinking is powerful and pervasive, underpinning everyday life, work,and science. It plays a role in activities ranging from understanding metaphors, becoming good at wayfinding, and interpreting works of art, to engaging in molecular modeling, generating geometry proofs, and interpreting astronomical data."

If you are interested in this topic, you might also be interested in the work of Alan M. MacEachren, the director of the GeoVista Center at Penn State. I recently had the opportunity to see Dr. MacEacren's presentation at UNC-C and the Charlotte Visualization Center's Visualization in the World Symposium. I was impressed with the depth and breadth of his work.

Dr. MacEachren is the author of How Maps Work: Representation, Visualization, and Design.

muCi: Muscle-Computer Interfaces- Link to post on TSHWI blog

Take a look at my recent post on the Technology-Supported Human-World Interaction blog about an article written by Desney Tan and his colleagues. Their recent research focused on the development and user-testing of a muscle-computer interface.

I think that the muCI system holds promise for children, teens, and adults who have special needs. I believe that this sort of interface will prove to useful in healthcare, education, homes, and community spaces, if it allows for interaction and interoperability with the technologies that people encounter in their daily lives.

This was cross-posted on the TechPsych blog.

Cross Post from Tech Psych: Visualization Symposium, Visualization Day

This is cross-posted on the Tech-Psych blog.

I recently attended the Visualization in the World Symposium, hosted by the Charlotte Viz Center at UNC-Charlotte. I was impressed by the variety of disciplines represented at the symposium- the speakers came from fields such as architecture, psychology, and geography. The audience was also diverse.

The slides from the presentations will be available soon, so check back to follow the links, or visit the Charlotte Visualization Center's website.

If you are interested in visual thinking, visual literacy, visual communication, and visualization in education, take the time to explore the links once they are posted!

FYI: There is a growing group of people who'd like to get a "World Visualization Day" off the ground. Earth Day is celebrated in our schools, why not a visualization day?! Dr. Kosara, the author of the Eager Eyes blog, is a strong supporter of this movement.

At the moment, various colleges and organizations offer a "visualization day" from time-to-time. If you live in the New York area, you might be interested in attending Visualization Day at City College of New York.

Video of OLPC's Social Features

Take a look a One Laptop Per Child's Interactive User Interface:


Here is a video about OLPC's social features:




What do you think?


Somewhat off-topic:
Who's your user- Usability Rap Video, via 90percent of Everything via Information Architecture Television

Have you heard of the Internet of Things? OpenSpime? (Link to related post)

Take a look at my post on the TSHWI blog to watch videoclips and read about emerging technologies related to the "Internet of Things" and Spime concepts.

Let me know what you think.

-Lynn

Digital 2008: 2nd IEEE International Conference on Digital Game and Intelligent Toy Enhanced Learning

The 2nd IEEE International Conference on Digital Game and Intelligent Toy Enhanced Learning will be in Banff, Canada, from November 17-19, 2008.

The call for papers is in process.

Here is some information from the conference website:

"Despite the surging interest in this emerging research, there are plenty challenging research issues to be investigated. For example, can one really learn meaningfully and deeply from games? Will there be new theories that explain phenomena of learning with fun? What constitute game pedagogies? How this genre of technology enhanced learning can be adopted to formal and informal learning settings? What are the possible dark sides of game and toyed education and how to prevent them? "

The topics of interest include but are not limited to:

Foundation and theory for design
Evaluation
Case studies and exemplars
Artificial intelligence
Virtual characters
Vitual storytelling and game narrative
Multiplayer and social game design
Simulation and animation
Entertainment Robots for Education
Augmented/Mixed Reality
Interfaces
Training
Sport
Non-Visual Senses (smelling, touching, hearing)
Mobile games and its linking to online games
Location-based games and ubiquitous technology
Identity in gaming to learn: roles and role-playing
Optimal experience and flow
Engagement and emotion
Collaboration, competition and community
Social and Cultural aspects

Contact Information:

Contact Information

Kinshuk, General Chair (kinshuk@ieee.org)

Michael Eisenberg, Program Chair (duck@research.cs.colorado.edu)

Jill Calliou, Local Administrator (jillc@athabascau.ca)

Hug Shirt and Hug from a Distance: Wearables for people with autism spectrum disorders? (Cross post from Tech Psych)

"Hug from a Distance" is a vest that can be electronically controlled to give someone a hug over the Internet. The vest was created by Floyd Meuller, who has a rich background in interactive technologies, multimedia, and interdisciplinary research.

Children with autism spectrum disorders who calm with pressure might benefit from this type of vest.



Another wearable technology is the Hug Shirt.

"Wearers hug themselves, then using Bluetooth technology and their cell phone, they can send it to someone else wearing a Hug Shirt that simulates the feeling of the hug," says Francesca Rosella, creative director of London-based CuteCircuit, which developed the interactive top. "It copies the strength, length, temperature and heart rate of the hug."

It would be interesting to research the effectiveness of these wearable technologies with children and teens who have autism spectrum disorders.

Look, touch, listen, and play: Seth Sandler's Interactive Audio Touch Table Video; NUI Group and Google's Summer of Code

Seth Sandler's most recent video of the Audio Touch interactive table provides a good demonstration of how multi-touch on a table can work with music.



Seth is a member of the NUI group (Natural User Interface). He is finishing a Bachelors degree in Interdisciplinary Computing and the Arts, with an emphasis on Music, at the University of California, San Diego. His research and development work centers around multi-touch, multi-user musical interfaces.

Here is an update about the NUI group:

"Natural User Interface or ~ NUI Group is an interactive media group researching and creating open source machine sensing techniques to benefit artistic and educational applications."

"We offer a collaborative environment for developers that are interested in learning and sharing new HCI (Human Computer Interaction) methods and concepts. This may include topics such as: voice/handwriting/gesture recognition, touch computing, computer vision, and information visualization."

The NUI group has been selected for mentoring organization for Google's Summer of Code, for those of you who are interested in working on open-source code for multi-touch systems. The student application process begins Monday, March 24th, 2008, and ends Monday, March 31st, 2008.

NUI group's project ideas page outlines the requirements for the application, which includes a 7500 word project proposal. The project page has a long list of ideas to spark some thinking for potential Summer of Code applicants.

For those of you who aren't into coding, I encourage you to take a look at the NUI Groups project ideas page just to get an idea of th interesting ideas that are being explored. The page has a list of links to other good resources.

Share the word with anyone who might be interested in the NUI Group's projects for the Summer of Code. We need to get more people interested in STEM careers, and the project ideas outlined by the NUI group look enticing.

Interactive User Interfaces: Nat Torkington's list of links to new and cool technologies.

Quick post:

Nat Torkington recently wrote a post on O'Reilly Radar with links and descriptions about new interactive interfaces, such as a multi-touch Rubik's Cube, a weather map with haptic feedback, NextWindow's multi-touch screens, Cyber Goggles, NUI, and more.

Nik Peachy is an edublogger who recently posted a great "how-two" about Soundscapes from SoundTransit.

According to Nik, SoundTransit "is a really wonderful formulation of an idea. It's not just a huge collection of Mp3 sound files from all over the world, but the sounds have been tagged by country and described and a visitor to the site can take a sound journey around the world."

From the SoundTransit website:

"SoundTransit is a collaborative, online community dedicated to field recording and phonography. In the “Book” section of this site, you can plan a sonic journey through various locations recorded around the world. And in the “Search” section, you can search the database for specific sounds by member artists from many different places. If you are a phonographer, you can also contribute your recordings for others to enjoy."

This would be a fun application to use in a social studies or music class! It also looks like a good application to use on an interactive whiteboard or display.

More about virtual worlds in education: Edutopia's articles and resources

The recent on-line newsletter from Edutopia has a list of links of articles and media about virtual worlds and games in education. This information compliments the video, "Virtual Worlds Tour", highlighted in my previous post.

Get a Life: Students Collaborate in Simulated Roles (Laila Weir)

The School of Second Life (Wagner James Au)

Simulation Nation: The Promise of Virtual Learning Activities: Inventive computer sims can turn dull lessons into hyperreal experiences, if we can get educators to use them" (Marc Prensky)

Related video: No Gamer Left Behind "Computer simulations area natural learning tools to a generation of video game players"

Let the Games Begin: Entertainment Meets Education (Jenn Shreve)

Related:

Loud and Clear: Students Find Their Voices Through Multimedia (Edutopia Staff)

Edutopia is part of the non-profit George Lucas Educational Foundation

Post a comment if you are using virtual worlds or games in your school!