Amber

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Chapel Hill school gives students iPod Touch

WRAL.com

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — One school in Chapel Hill has provided every student with an iPod touch.

Culbreth Middle School has 622 of the slim, portable computers – one for every teacher and for every student. They were purchased through grants and technology funds.

“We don’t build lessons around the iPod Touch per se. It’s a tool just like you use your textbook,” said Culbreth technology coordinator Val Brown. “The opportunity it has afforded our kids is amazing. The engagement is simply phenomenal.”

Students don’t get to take the devices home, but they do carry them from class to class.

“Instead of having lots of resources, books (and) dictionaries around, we can just go to the iPod Touch and research it,” said sixth-grader Emma Brodey.

There is no phone, music or e-mail capability. Students can surf the web, though many sites are blocked, including Facebook. Students can also download podcasts or play math or word games.

As they type in answers to questions, teachers see the responses on a laptop.

“I know before they leave that day who knows what (and) who doesn’t get it, so I have a constant assessment tool,” said teacher Pete Schwartz.

The staff at Culbreth Middle is talking with several schools across the U.S. and in other countries about how they can use the devices in their classrooms.

Reporter: Renee Chou
Photographer: Greg Hutchinson
Web Editor: Kelly Hinchcliffe

Archive Disc for the course

Official Documentation Format for NCSU COD GD

Please review the link above regarding rules and requirements for your semester archive discs.

You will need to include the following documents for this course:

COURSE FOLDER:
Doe_GD492_spring10

CREATE A FOLDER FOR EACH PROJECT:
Doe_GD492_AR-Mobile-App-Warmup
> Doe_GD492_AR-Mobile-App-Warmup.fla
> Doe_GD492_AR-Mobile-App-Warmup.swf
> Doe_GD492_AR-Mobile-App-Warmup-desc.pdf

Doe_GD492_Mobile-App
> Doe_GD492_Mobile-App-Brief-Pres.pdf (or chosen format)
> Doe_GD492_Mobile-App.fla
> Doe_GD492_Mobile-App.swf
> Doe_GD492_Mobile-App-Final-Pres.fla (if Flash is chosen format)
> Doe_GD492_Mobile-App-Final-Pres.swf (or chosen format)
> Doe_GD492_Mobile-App-desc.pdf
> Doe_GD492_Mobile-App-process.pdf

NOTES AND DESCRIPTIONS:
Doe_GD492_AR-Mobile-App-Warmup-desc.pdf
Provide at least a paragraph description of your Augmented Reality Mobile Application Warm-up project. The description should include a title, the purpose, what is demonstrated in the file.

Doe_GD492_Mobile-App-Brief-Pres.pdf
The Mobile App Project Brief presentation delivered on March 11.

Doe_GD492_Mobile-App.fla
The fully-functioning interactive thread of your mobile app.

Doe_GD492_Mobile-App-Pres.fla
The final presentation of your mobile app.

Doe_GD492_Mobile-App-desc.pdf
Provide at least a paragraph description of your Mobile Application project. The description should include a title, the purpose (objectives), audience, description of the process learned, and what the scenario demonstrates.

Doe_GD492_Mobile-App-process.pdf
Provide documentation of your process in chronological order. Start with the description provided in the document above. The rest of the document should be an organized static version of everything you posted to the website in regard to the Mobile App project.

App Project: Evaluations

Download pdf of App Project Evaluation form


Everyone will receive an email invitation to an interactive pdf form. You will be asked to fill out the evaluation form for each project (using Adobe Acrobat reader) and submit the evaluation back to me.

The evaluation includes analytical and holistic criteria:
Students will evaluate their peers’ projects based on the analytical criteria.
T-Mobile participants will evaluate the projects based on the holistic criteria.

After I compile the evaluations, each student will receive a graphic representation of their project evaluations as well as the raw data from each reviewer (reviewer names will be anonymous).

Download pdf of mock data compilation

App Project: Final Presentations

Arrive at 10am
Tuesday, April 27
to load ALL presentations
onto one computer.

(Bagels will be served)

FILE FORMAT:
gd492_lastName_appPresentation.swf
1024 x 768

PRESENTATION FORMAT:
9 minutes presentation
3 minutes Q&A
2 minutes to finish evaluation and transition

ORDER OF PRESENTATIONS:
April 27
10:15 : Caitlin Atteberry
10:29 : Leah Lawrence
10:43 : Nick Romanos
10:57 : Logan Sayles
11:11 : Dave Maki
11:25 : Jonathan Stephens
11:39 : Betsy Sherertz
11:53 : Sam Cox

April 29
10:15 : Betsy Peters
10:29 : Lauren Hall
10:43 : Jen Edwards
10:57 : Alex McNeilly
11:11 : Christina Hardison
11:25 : Madiha Malik
11:39 : Riley Huston

Flash demo : tween with code

The Flash plugin is required to view this object.

To learn more about TweenMax and TweenLite, go to

To learn about the flash transition class

Draw a rectangle the size of the screen (240 x 380px) on the stage.

Convert the rectangle to an mc named “box”.

Double click on the mc to get to the box timeline.

Create a new layer named “button”.

Draw a rectangle and convert it to a button named “circle_btn”.

Name the instance of the button “circle_btn” in the properties inspector.

Go back to the main timeline and name the instance of the box on the stage “box” in the properties inspector.

Create a new layer named “actions” and paste the following code in the actions palette:

import com.greensock.*;
import com.greensock.easing.*;

// ————VARIABLES——————————————–

//object position variables
var xPos:Number = stage.stageWidth / 2;
var yPos:Number = stage.stageHeight / 2;

// ————ADD OBJECT TO STAGE———————————-
/*
//add child to stage variables
var box:MovieClip = new box_mc();

//add the movieclip from the library to the stage
addChild (box);
*/

// ————SET INITIAL STAGE POSITIONS——————————————–
//object name and postion (refer to position variables above)
box.x = xPos;
box.y = yPos;

// ————LISTENER AND FUNCTION FOR CLICK ON BOX——————————————–
box.circle_btn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, onCircleClick);

function onCircleClick (event:Event):void{
//add tween for box currently on stage
TweenMax.to(box, 1, {x:-120, y:yPos, alpha:1, ease:Circ.easeOut, delay:.15});
}

Flash Demo : drag and drop objects

The Flash plugin is required to view this object.

Drag the same pink and black box mc’s from the previous demo onto the stage.

Name them “box_gray” and “box_pink” respectively.

Create a new layer named “actions” and paste the following code into the actions palette:

box_gray.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, dragGray);
box_gray.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_UP, dropGray);
box_pink.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, dragPink);
box_pink.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_UP, dropPink);

//box_gray.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, enterGray);
box_pink.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, hit);

function dragGray (event:MouseEvent) : void {
event.target.startDrag();
}

function dropGray (event:MouseEvent) : void {
event.target.stopDrag();

}

function dragPink (event:MouseEvent) : void {
event.target.startDrag();
}

function dropPink (event:MouseEvent) : void {
event.target.stopDrag();

}

function hit (event:Event) : void {
if (box_pink.hitTestObject(box_gray)) {
box_gray.alpha = .25;
} else {
box_gray.alpha = 1;
}
}

Flash demo : add and remove child from stage

The Flash plugin is required to view this object.

Create a pink box on the stage and convert it to an mc named “box_pink”. Before clicking okay, check the radio button to “export for Actionscript”.

Create a black box on the stage and convert it to an mc named “box_black”. Before clicking okay, check the radio button to “export for Actionscript”.

Delete both instances from the stage.

Select the first keyframe in the timeline and paste the following code into the actions panel:

var boxBlk:MovieClip = new box_black();
var boxPink:MovieClip = new box_pink();

var xPos = stage.stageWidth / 2;
var yPos = stage.stageHeight / 2;

boxBlk.x = xPos;
boxBlk.y = yPos;
boxPink.x = 120;
boxPink.y = 150;

addChild (boxBlk);

boxBlk.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, onBlackClick);
boxPink.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, onPinkClick);

function onBlackClick (event:MouseEvent) : void {
removeChild (boxBlk);
addChild (boxPink);

}

function onPinkClick (event:MouseEvent) : void {
addChild (boxBlk);
removeChild (boxPink);
}

Flash Demo : animate with code

The Flash plugin is required to view this object.

Create a box on the stage and convert it to a movieClip named “box”.

Name the instance of the mc “box” using the properties inspector.

Create a new layer named “actions” and paste the following code into the actions panel:

//add child to stage variables
var box:MovieClip = new box_mc();

//add the movieclip from the library to the stage
//addChild (box);

//position box on stage
box.x = stage.stageWidth / 2;
box.y = stage.stageHeight / 2;

//scale and transparency box
box.scaleX = .25;
box.scaleY = 1;
box.alpha = .1;

//enter frame listener and function to animate when movie begins
box.addEventListener (Event.ENTER_FRAME, animate);

function animate (event:Event) : void {
event.target.scaleX += .01;
event.target.scaleY -= .01;
event.target.alpha += .05;
event.target.rotation += .5;
}

Scenario Example

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

iPhone Technical Specifications

iPhone screen size is: 480-by-320-pixel resolution at 163 ppi

Find all technical specifications here.

Zeo : Personal Sleep Coach


Zeo: Personal Sleep Coach

Step 1: Wear the Zeo Headband
You begin by wearing the Zeo Headband each night. The headband uses our patent-pending SoftWave™ sensor technology to accurately and safely measure your unique sleep patterns through the electrical signals naturally produced by the brain. As you pass through different levels of sleep – lighter to deeper and back again – the Zeo Headband tracks how you are sleeping. Find out more about the headband.

Step 2: Review Your Sleep Data on the Bedside Display
The Zeo Bedside Display puts last night’s sleep data at your fingertips and will store up to two weeks of data for easy viewing. When you wake up, it gives you a personal sleep score – your ZQ – and shows a graph of your Light, Deep and REM sleep over the course of the night. The bedside display will also present you with information about last night’s sleep and how it compares to previous nights. The optional SmartWake™ alarm feature will look for a “natural awakening point” based on your sleep patterns to decrease the grogginess associated with waking from Deep sleep. When SmartWake is selected, Zeo will find a time to wake you within a half-hour of your set time, never later. The result should be a slightly easier way to wake up. Learn more.

Step 3: Upload and View Your Sleep Data
Your personal sleep discovery doesn’t stop with the bedside display! The Zeo Bedside Display allows you to store your sleep information on an SD memory card (like the memory cards used with digital cameras). With your SD card and its USB adapter, you can easily upload all of your sleep information to the myZeo Personal Coaching website, and begin to spot trends in your sleep that you have never been able to see before.

Sleep Journal
Uncover the links between how you live – including exercise, diet, stress, and environment – and how you sleep. Available both online and on paper, your Zeo Sleep Journal allows you to record lifestyle, environmental, and consumption factors that can disrupt your sleep. You’ll learn about the 7 Sleep Stealers™ and how much they can affect your sleep data each night. You can also define your own lifestyle factors to record. The more sleep stealers you track, the more insights you’ll find about how your actions may be affecting your Sleep Fitness.

Sleep Tools
Using Zeo’s online tools, you can begin to understand how your ZQ and morning feel scores change from night to night. You’ll also spot any connections between your daily lifestyle choices and your nightly sleep and find out for yourself some of the cause and effect patterns in your sleep.

Step 4: Start Your 7 Step Sleep Fitness™ Program, Your Personal Guide to a Better Night’s Sleep
The 7 Step Sleep Fitness Program is a guided self-discovery process for your sleep. This personalized sleep coaching program asks you to set goals for your sleep and then provides you with customized strategies to help you to achieve these goals. In addition, you can learn more about the latest sleep research, and receive recommendations on how to track the items that are most beneficial for you. Through this program, you’ll experience the power of seeing your own sleep data and learn about which factors may be affecting your sleep. You will have full control over the program to skip, repeat or start-over any step you wish. Special features of the program include:

  • A series of personalized e-mails that incorporate effective sleep tips and advice, customized to your sleep data, lifestyle and goals.
  • A customized action plan to deal with each of the 7 Sleep Stealers as they relate to you and your sleep.
  • Goal-oriented assignments that are realistic and achievable, and will not require you to drastically rearrange your lifestyle or even your sleep style.
  • Positive, supportive, and easy to understand suggestions and exercises, in everyday language that is easy to follow.
  • The Zeo Sleep Information Center is an online library for sleep information and science. In addition to offering another kind of self-guided, personal coaching tool, you can use the Sleep Information Center to discover what sleep is, and why it’s important.

DICE 2010: “Design Outside the Box” Presentation

Copia “Read Better Together”


Welcome to Copia: the first social eReading experience designed so you can discover, connect and share what’s meaningful.
We read to learn, to discover and to entertain, passing along bits and pieces as we go. Sometimes we pass thoughts, stories or behaviors. Other times it’s the whole book, or just an excerpt. Regardless of what we pass or how, when the cycle of reading, learning and sharing begins, it keeps on going. And with Copia’s wide range of digital books, magazines and newspapers, it’ll never end.

T-Mobile: Storyboarding / Jon Mann

Download Jon Mann’s Storyboard presentation (PDF)

Download Grid paper (PDF)

Project H Lecture at NCSU

Design Revolution Road Show and Lecture
Monday, March 1, 1:30PM
NCSU, Burns Auditorium

Project H Design connects the power of design to the people who need it most, and the places where it can make a real and lasting difference.

We are a team of designers and builders engaging locally to improve the quality of life for the socially overlooked. Our five-tenet design process (There is no design without (critical) action; We design WITH, not FOR; We document, share and measure; We start locally and scale globally, We design systems, not stuff) results in simple and effective design solutions for those without access to creative capital.

Our long-term initiatives focus on improving environments, products, and experiences for K-12 education institutions in the US through systems- level design thinking and deep community engagements.

Project H is a tax exempt 501c3 nonprofit based in the San Francisco Bay Area and Bertie County, North Carolina. We believe design can change the world.

Emily Pilloton is the Founder and Executive Director of Project H Design. Trained in architecture at UC Berkeley and product design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, she started Project H to provide a conduit and catalyst for need-based product design that empowers individuals, communities, and economies. Former Managing Editor of Inhabitat.com, writer, California girl and unwavering optimist, she has written for ID, GOOD, ReadyMade, taught design theory, and lectures worldwide about new social impact imperatives for the product design industry. Her book, “Design Revolution: 100 Products that Empower People,” is a compendium of and call-to-action for product design for social impact. When she isn’t traveling or emailing, Emily enjoys trivia games and baking (and eating) cupcakes.

NYC IxDA / Tap is the New Click / Dan Saffer

NYC IxDA – Tap is the New Click – Dan Saffer from Interaction Design Association on Vimeo.

Even though the technology has been around for decades, only now are we starting to see mass production and adoption of touchscreen and gestural devices for the public. Jeff Han’s influential 2006 TED demonstration of his multitouch system, followed by the launches of Nintendo’s Wii, Apple’s iPhone, and Microsoft Surface, have announced a new era of interaction design, one where gestures in space and touches on a screen will be as prominent as pointing and clicking.

But how do you create products for this new paradigm? While most of us know how to design desktop and web applications, what do you need to know to design for interactive gestures?

This introduction to designing gestural interfaces will cover the basics: usability and ergonomics; a brief history of the technology; some elemental patterns of use; prototyping and documenting; and how to communicate that a gestural interface is present to users.

ABOUT DAN SAFFER
Dan Saffer is an experience design director for Adaptive Path. An international speaker and author, his writing on design has appeared in BusinessWeek and many online publications. His acclaimed book Designing for Interaction: Creating Smart Applications and Clever Devices has been called “a bookshelf must-have for anyone thinking of creating new designs” and has been translated into several languages. His new book on interactive gestures will be published by O’Reilly in October 2008.

Dan is a member of the Industrial Designers Society of America (IDSA) and the Interaction Design Association (IxDA). He received his Master of Design in Interaction Design from Carnegie Mellon University.

Writing Service/Learning Objectives

Download PDF

Blaise Aguera y Arcas (Microsoft)

In a demo that drew gasps at TED2010, Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos new augmented-reality mapping technology from Microsoft.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas leads a dazzling demo of Photosynth, software that could transform the way we look at digital images. Using still photos culled from the Web, Photosynth builds breathtaking dreamscapes and lets us navigate them.

Blaise Aguera y Arcas’ background is as multidimensional as the visions he helps create. In the 1990s, he authored patents on both video compression and 3D visualization techniques, and in 2001, he made an influential computational discovery that cast doubt on Gutenberg’s role as the father of movable type.
He also created Seadragon (acquired by Microsoft in 2006), the visualization technology that gives Photosynth its amazingly smooth digital rendering and zoom capabilities. Photosynth itself is a vastly powerful piece of software capable of taking a wide variety of images, analyzing them for similarities, and grafting them together into an interactive three-dimensional space. This seamless patchwork of images can be viewed via multiple angles and magnifications, allowing us to look around corners or “fly” in for a (much) closer look. Simply put, it could utterly transform the way we experience digital images.

Wallpaper Augmented Reality Issue

Wallpaper Augmented Reality issue from James Alliban on Vimeo.

Multitouch Screens Could Enliven New Devices

Originally posted at New York Times on February 7, 2010
clear touch technologyA clear version of Touchco’s multitouch sensor platform.

Update | 11:09 a.m. Correcting post to reflect that capacitive touch screens use contact with skin, not pressure, as an input.

Update | 11:58 a.m. Correcting post to reflect that capacitive touch devices are not limited to two simultaneous inputs.

Multitouch screens have been a little slower to enter the electronics marketplace than consumers might have hoped. Since Jeff Han, a research scientist at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, first presented his multitouch wall at the TED Conference in 2006, we’ve seen other multitouch technologies trickle into the electronic marketplace. The cellphone has used the technology most, starting with the iPhone, and then moving into other smartphones using Google’s Android platform and Hewlett-Packard TouchSmart countertop computer. But with the exception of a few outliers and device manufacturer research demos, we haven’t really seen multitouch used in other consumer electronics yet.

multiple inputs on a screen
Touchco’s multitouch surface.

That might all change soon. Ilya Rosenberg, Ken Perlin and a small team of computer scientists from New York University’s Media Research Lab hope to bring a new kind of multitouch to everything from new e-readers to musical instruments, with their new company, Touchco.

Devices like the iPhone use a technology called capacitive touch and require contact with skin to activate a touch point. These touch technologies also limit the number of simultaneous inputs (the iPhone can track up to five fingers at once). In contrast, Touchco uses a technology called interpolating force-sensitive resistance, or I.F.S.R. This technology uses force-sensitive resistors, which become more conductive as you apply different levels of pressure, and then constantly scan and detect different inputs.

This allows for very low power, unlimited simultaneous touch inputs and the possibility of fully flexible multitouch devices. The technology is also extremely inexpensive; Mr. Rosenberg hopes to sell sheets of I.F.S.R. for as little as $10 a square foot.

So where can you expect to see this technology? Mr. Perlin believes you will see a new range of multitouch e-readers in the coming year, along with new musical instruments and other laptops or notebooks. Touchco has also been working closely with Disney animators to create a true digital sketchbook replacement, utilizing extremely sensitive pressure sensors to determine pencil thickness or even use of an eraser. The software behind the sensors can easily differentiate between the palm of a hand, a brush or a pencil.

There is also the possibility that the right implementation on computer could change the way we interact with interfaces. As an example, Mr. Rosenberg showed me a long sheet of I.F.S.R., about the size of a large flat panel computer monitor, which allowed manipulation of a 3-D computer program. When I lightly dragged my hand across the touch panel I could control the cursor. When I applied more pressure, I could select objects and change their orientation, size and shape within the program. It was incredibly intuitive and simple to navigate.

As you can see from the images below, there are lots of potential applications and devices that could use inexpensive multitouch technology. You can also see some video demonstrations on Touchco’s YouTube page.

eink screens
Two E Ink prototype screens using Touchco’s multi-touch technology.
flexible touchco display
A mini sheet of a flexible touch sensitive material.
screenshot of touch display pressureSensors pick up the pressure of a hand placed on a Touchco device.
pencil marks a the screenSensors capture the variation in pressure levels of a pencil drawing.
Touchco multi-touch with eink displayPhotos: Nick Bilton/The New York TimesTouchco’s multitouch technology being used with an e-ink screen.

Touchco began selling developer product kits to device manufacturers this year and hopes to see new devices enter the digital marketplace by late 2010. Touchco published technical specifications here.