Wet Sounds 2008: A Festival of Underwater Sounds- I want to go!

I was sitting at the kitchen table, looking at the paperwork I need to finish, and daydreaming about what I want to do this summer, when I came across information about Wet Sounds 2008: A Festival of Underwater Sounds. If you visit the website, move your curser, (or finger, if you have a touch screen) around the page. Bubbles float around, as if you are under water.
Unfortunately, the nine pools hosting Wet Sounds are in England.

WetSounds is sponsored by NewToy, a company that is involved in sound design, films, theater, new media, art installation, video art, dance, and radio.

"The audience dips in and floats around, ears submerged, absorbed in sounds coming from underwater speakers".... "Sound travels 4 times quicker than in air, due to the water's density, it is perceived not only by the ears but also by the bones and body. The sensation is similar to a floatation tank effect. The activity promotes relaxation, listening, openness to sound art and enhanced audio perception".

Phoenix Mars Mission Website

The following is part of a related post from the TechPsych blog about the Phoenix Mars Mission:

If you are an educator with access to an interactive whiteboard and can integrate a visit to Mars into your lesson plans during the last days of the school year, a trip to the Phoenix Mars Mission website is a must! The website is well designed and user-friendly.

Renderings of the Phoenix Mars Lander

Here are few places to start:

Phoenix Mars Mission News
Web Exhibit -Mars: The Search for Water, the Search for Life
Flash Video Stream (the video has relaxing ambient music, by the way)
Images
Videos and Animations
Just for Kids - this site was designed with content by kids to share with others.

From Mars to Earth: An Interactive Timeline

Enjoy!

Virtual Architecture, Virtual Archeology

It is interesting to see how interactive technology is cutting across so many disciplines!

Raising the Titanic

Ken Rigby's company, MellaniuM, developed the plugin for this project. To learn more about this project, check out Electric Archaeology: Digital Media for Learning and Research, and the related links:

Shawn Graham, Archaeologist
Agent Based Modeling in Archaeologists
http://electricarchaeologist.wordpress.com/2008/04/22/autocad-into-unreal2/

AutoCad Plugin for Unreal
http://mellanium13.blogspot.com/2008/02/mellanium-virtual-architecture.html

Dance.Draw Project : Exquisite Interaction - Collaboration between Software Information Systems -HCI- and Dance Departments at UNC-Charlotte

DANCE.DRAW: EXQUISITE INTERACTION
(Updated)

"The movement of the visualizations are artifacts in real-time of the movements of the dancers. They draw while they dance, they dance together and they draw together. Every performance generates a new visual imprint." -DanceDraw website

Interactive multimedia technology, blended with the arts!

Dr. Celene LaTulipe, from UNC-Charlotte's Software and Information Systems Department, Professor Sybil Huskey, from the dance department, dance students, and others collaborated to create an amazing performance that I had the opportunity to see performed during the Visualization in the World Symposium in April (2008).

If you look closely, you will see that each dancer holds two wireless mice, one in each hand. The mice trigger the visualization that is projected in the background. Dr. LaTulipe has focused some of her research on two-handed computer interaction. It is interesting to see how her work has been applied to this beautiful "off-the-desktop" application.

Dance.Draw is a work in progress- visit the following links for more information:

Website (Updated)
Movie
Technical Info
Dr. Kosara's Eager Eyes post about Dance.Draw

Note:
Dr. LaTulipe was my HCI professor- Dr. Kosara was my Visualization/Visual Communication professor.

Game Based Learning: Second European Conference

The 2008 Second European Conference on Game-Based Learning will be held in Barcelona, Spain, October 16-17, hosted by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.

Speaker Bios

Conference Program

If you are working in a K-12 setting and interested in sharing your ideas about game-based learning, please leave me a message. I'm especially interested in how interactive games support engaged, meaningful learning.

Engaged Learning Revisited: Four videoclips for reflection....

Last October, I shared a couple of videos to highlight a discussion about engaged learning in a post on my TechPsych blog. Today, I received a thoughtful comment from a teacher who was moved by the videos. I thought that I'd recycle that post and add two other videos that provide related messages in ways that can not be conveyed effectively by words alone:

From the October TechPsych post:
Those who follow my blogs know that I usually focus on the positive- engaging technologies, exciting research, interesting websites, and successes of others worth sharing. Today I came across a video that got me thinking about the importance of engaged learning, a topic I've written about in the past.

Much effort is extended in our high schools to prepare students for the "real" learning that will take place in college. With the increased emphasis on testing, it seems like the moment a child enters kindergarten, one of the main goals is to prepare for learning the skills needed in the following grade. Every student must be "ready".

Ready for....this?


In today's digital world, traditional word-based instruction doesn't always result in experiences that engage the hearts and minds of young people.

The video below was created by students involved in the Digital Ethnography group at Kansas State University. Michael Wesch is the professor behind this group. At the beginning of the video, the camera slowly peers around an empty university lecture hall, with the the following quote superimposed over the scene:

"Today's child is bewildered when he enters the 19th century environment that still characterizes the educational establishment where information is scarce but ordered and structured by fragmented, classified patterns, subjects, and schedules." -Marshall McLuhan, 1967

Although the quote is now forty years old, the message communicated in this video is clear. Despite technology, things haven't really changed, as traditional methods of teaching tend to disengage rather than engage a good number of students.



After viewing the above video, watch this video, "When I grow up I want to be a teacher", a parody of a Monster.com commercial.



For a broader perspective, take some time to reflect on the following video, originally created by Karl Fisch, and posted to his blog, the Fischbowl:
"A staff development blog for Arapahoe High School teachers exploring constructivism and 21st century learning skills. The opinions expressed here are the personal views of Karl Fisch - and various other teachers at Arapahoe - and do not (necessarily) reflect the views of Littleton Public Schools."

DID YOU KNOW? SHIFT HAPPENS


"DEBUNKING THE MYTHS OF THE THIRD WORLD" is Hans Rosling's presentation at TED 2006 is a great example of the use of presenting information supported by engaging information techniques. More videos are on the Gapminder website. This video is about 20 minutes long, but worth every second.



"With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, Prof. Hans Rosling uses software from Gapminder debunks a few myths about the "developing" world. This global health visionary has discovered a powerful new way to communicate complex data about the world; his remarkable interactive graphs help deliver profound insights about global trends and will change forever the way you think about "us" and "them." Rosling is professor of international health at Sweden's Karolinska Institute, and founder of Gapminder, a nonprofit that brings vital global data to life."