Plug for Computer Science in Education Week: Informative series of short video clips, resources, and links to promote understanding of the importance of computer science and related fields

This week is Computer Education in Education Week, part of an effort of ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) and CSTA (Computer Science Teachers Association) to promote awareness of the importance of computer science education in K-12 education. CSTA developed a series of short videos to share with students as part of this effort. The videos highlight the multitude of ways that computer scientists impact our world. In my opinion, the videos would be appropriate for sharing with parents, teachers, school counselors, school administrators, and school board members.

Computer Science and Entertainment


Computer Science and the Environment


Computer Science and Communications


Computer Science and Medicine


Computer Science and Empowerment


To dig deeper into this topic, read Running On Empty: The Failure to Teach K-12 Computer Science in the Digital Age (pdf)

RELATED
CSEd: Computer Science in Education Week
Computing in the Core
Computer Science in Education Facebook Page
Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology
ACM/CSTA's Recommendations
A Model Curriculum for K-12 Computer Science (PDF)
Google: Exploring Computational Thinking
ACM Computing Careers Website

Cross-posted on the Tech Psych blog.

UPDATE: Demo 2 of the Kinect Theramin, Therenect, by Martin Kaltenbrunner

I recently posted about the Therenect, a gesture-controlled digital theremin created for Microsoft's Kinect, created by Martin Kaltenbrenner - Therenect: Theremin for the Kinect! (via Martin Kaltenbrenner)  It looks like Martin has been busy polishing up the application over the past few days, as you can see from the video below:

Therenect - Kinect Theremin - 2nd Demo from Martin Kaltenbrunner on Vimeo.

RELATED
Virtual Theremin Made with Kinect; Real Thereminists Will Make it Useful
Peter Kirn, Create Digital Music, 11/30/10

ICE PAD: Interactive Multitouch Ice Sculpture by Art Below Zero (video)

ICE PAD: Interactive Multitouch Ice Sculpture by Art Below Zero


Here is the information about the interactive sculpture from the Art Below Zero YouTube Channel:

"Created by David Sauer & Max Zuleta for the Lake Forest Tree Lighting Festival.This Ice Crystal Display was the 1st to be created in the USA, Transforming 300 pounds of ice into the equivalent of a giant Ipad touch screen. "People always want to touch our Ice Sculptures, This Interactive Display gave them the perfect reason to get their hands cold." said Max Zuleta owner of Art Below Zero. The public response was amazement and interest in the workings of the touch screen in ice. Our favorite guess was "It must work by sensing body heat!"..."

"...The system is known as Rear Diffused Illumination or Rear DI. It works because an Infrared light is shone from the opposite side of the ice wall through the ice. When an object such as a finger, hand, or mitten stops the infrared light it reflects the light back to a custom camera built by Peau Productions. The illuminated objects are then converted to points of interaction using an open source program Community Core Vision which outputs TUIO data streams to a Flash program for animation. We like the look and feel of the Fluid Solver flash application. The output from the computer is then projected into the ice and ice diffracts the light into something beautiful. By this method the user can manipulate a visible light screen via an invisible light that only the camera can see..."


Thanks to Nolan Ramseyer, of PeauProductions, for the link!
PeauProductions Blog: Multitouch and Technology


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Ubice = Multi-touch On Ice at the Nokia Research Center in Finland (Video + Pic via Albrecht Schmidt)
Art Below Zero

Interactive Information Visualization for the Kinect? Something like Jer Thop's "Just Landed-36 Hours" might work nicely if revamped!

I follow the O'Reilly Radar blogs and came across a recent post about an information visualization created by blprnt two years ago using Processing. I think it would have great potential if it was re-purposed for use on the Kinect! In the article, Edd Dumbill discusses the advantages of using Processing to create data and information visualizations.  


One example of the power of Processing is an information visualization, "Just Landed -36 Hours, created by Jer Thorp.  Jer gathered tweets from Twitter that included the statement, "just landed", along with location information for each tweet, within a 36-hour period, to create the visualization.


36 Hours- Just Landed is a great 3D visualization of air travel on our planet.  I especially lik the different views that the application provides. As soon as I watched the Just Landed video, I thought it would be great if it could be revamped for use on the Kinect!   (Leave a comment if you know of anyone working on a project in this area.)


Just Landed - 36 Hours from blprnt on Vimeo.


Information about the video from blprnt's Vimeo site:


"I was discussing H1N1 with a bioinformatics friend of mine last weekend, and we ended up talking about ways that epidemiologists model transmission of disease. I wondered how some of the information that is shared voluntarily on social networks might be used to build useful models of various kinds...I'm also interested in visualizing information that isn't implicitly shared - but instead is inferred or suggested...This piece looks for tweets containing the phrases 'just landed in...' or 'just arrived in...'. Locations from these tweets are located using MetaCarta's Location Finder API. The home location for the traveling users are scraped from their Twitter pages. The system then plots these voyages over time...I'm not entirely sure where this will end up going, but I am reasonably happy with the results so far.   Built with Processing (processing.org) You can read more about this project on my blog - blog.blprnt.com"


RELATED
Strata Gems:  Write your own visualizations:  The Processing language is an easy way to get started with graphics
Edd Dumbill, O'Reilly Radar, 12/3/10

Air Presenter Plus, for the Kinect, for Presentations, developed by Evoluce and So touch

As soon as Kinect was released by Microsoft, there was a flurry of app development. Evoluce and So Touch partnered to create a presentation application for the Kinect that could be used in work settings. Take a look!


Information about Air Presenter Plus, from the So touch's YouTube channel:

"So touch, the leading creative software company for new digital technologies, in partnership with Evoluce, the leading provider of advanced multi-touch screen technologies, present: So touch Air Presenter for Kinect. The world's first presentation software optimized for Kinect.

Turn your corporate presentations, welcome areas, trade show booths and point of sales into mind boggling experiences, controlling your presentation with multi-touch gestures leveraging So touch Air Presenter gestures software and Evoluce Kinect Windows 7 software.

Integrate your usual PDF, Power point, JPG and video materials into So touch multi-touch minority report's style interface and control it with gestures in the air.

So touch Air Presenter is delivered with a very graphic player, featuring a multi-touch zoom mode and an integrated video player as well as a very easy to use content manager.

So touch Air Presenter content, sourced locally or from the network, can be played on multiple screens at the same time. So touch Air Presenter content manager can deliver customize or generic content to each player.

So touch Air Presenter packaged with Evoluce Kinect Windows 7 software will be released soon. So touch Air Presenter is already available for TUIO based gestures devices. To know more and download a free trial version, visit http://www.so-touch.com/air-presenter"



So touch
Evoluce

Video: DaVinci Surface Physics Illustrator Interface on Xbox Kinect, with gesture interaction, by Razorfish

DaVinci prototype on Xbox Kinect from Razorfish - Emerging Experiences on Vimeo.

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Razorfish ports DaVinci interface to Kinect, makes physics cool (video)
Time Stevens, Engaget, 12/5/10
Razorfish
(I love this website.)