Recently, a colleague asked me what ideas I might have for interesting student projects that would take advantage of these new, participatory media tools. I thought about it and started to make a list. I came up with about 30 ideas but some of them were
TweetCraft is an in-game Twitter client for World of Warcraft. TweetCraft can: Send/receive Tweets in-game Upload in-game screenshots using TwitPic AutoTweet when you log in, enter an instance or get an achievement Extensible so that AddOn authors can register messages or events to AutoTweet
Zigtag is an intelligent social bookmarking tool. It allows you to save your favorite websites by tagging them with keywords, which you can then use to retrieve the pages again at a later date. This makes it easy to categorize and organize any number of bookmarks, and is more manageable than your browser's built-in favorites tool. The social aspect of Zigtag is that you can search not only your own bookmarks but also those of your friends or the entire Zigtag community, and you can share your own favorites with others if you choose. You can also create and join groups which are dedicated to sharing content about various subjects, allowing you to constantly discover new pages that are interesting and relevant to you. The intelligence aspect is that our tags have defined meanings, so when you tag a page, you are assigning it a definition rather than a simple word that could have multiple meanings. Having defined tags is what sets Zigtag apart from other social bookmarking web sites.
Common Tag is an open tagging format developed to make content more connected, discoverable and engaging. Unlike free-text tags, Common Tags are references to unique, well-defined concepts, complete with metadata and their own URLs. With Common Tag, site owners can more easily create topic hubs, cross-promote their content, and enrich their pages with free data, images and widgets.
Faviki - Social bookmarking tool using smart semantic Wikipedia (DBpedia) tags
Semantic tags allow you to find your bookmarks easier. Faviki categorizes your tags automatically, keeping your and your friend's bookmarks and interests well organized. Faviki uses semantic tags - references to unique concepts that have their own URLs. This solves the problem of having different tags for the same concept (Coca-Cola, cocacola, coke).
Faviki - Social bookmarking tool using smart semantic Wikipedia (DBpedia) tags
Semantic tags allow you to find your bookmarks easier. Faviki categorizes your tags automatically, keeping your and your friend's bookmarks and interests well organized. Faviki uses semantic tags - references to unique concepts that have their own URLs. T
We're developing Pachube as a platform that helps people to build applications that bridge physical and networked worlds. To that end, we are going to be releasing demo apps more frequently, and where possible all necessary code for building your own, to show off the kind of things that you can do once your data is Pachube-connected. This kind of application could provide an easy way to inspect rooms (or streets) full of sensor and environment data via a camera (e.g. iPhone)... or even AR goggles! To start off with a bang, see this augmented reality demo where 3D Pachube visualisation data is overlayed in realtime 'on top' of Arduino sensor boxes that we have around the office
Alternate and Augmented Reality Games are a new and emerging instructional design method born out of the constructivist tradition. ARG’s fall into two groups. Augmented Reality Gaming and Alternate Reality Gaming. This adventure is divided into two parts according to these different “flavors”. This adventure will introduce you to the world of Alternate Reality Games as an emerging Learning Environment
IVE Research Lab (ntelligent Virtual Environments)
Research in Intelligent Virtual Environments aims at developing new models of interactivity based on Artificial Intelligence techniques. This encompasses the use of AI for interaction (for instance, Virtual Actors, Multimodal Interfaces for Augmented and Virtual reality) but also the investigation of AI techniques for virtual world representation and behaviour: knowledge-based event systems, common sense representations, qualitative physics. There is a wide range of applications for this research, from the development of new media such as Interactive Storytelling or Virtual Reality Art, to research in Human Factors related to the perception of causality.
On Saturday Night, I saw first-hand why the TV networks might be one of the casualties of the Future of TV. Instead of watching Prime Time TV that night, Cindy and I decided to log onto Xbox Live to play 1 vs 100.
On Saturday Night, I saw first-hand why the TV networks might be one of the casualties of the Future of TV. Instead of watching Prime Time TV that night, Cindy and I decided to log onto Xbox Live to play 1 vs 100.
Interesting Ways to use Voicethread, Wordle and the Nintendo DS | ICT in my Classroom
It has been great to see the range of classroom ideas in the “Interesting Ways” series really expand and develop over time. It is always great to connect with a fellow educator and invite them to edit the various presentations. We are about to kick off a Nintendo DS project at school, which you will hear more about here soon, and so I have been thrilled to see a bunch of ideas outlined by people with direct classroom experience of using the consoles. It will prove a useful set of current thinking for our teachers and I hope we’ll be able to contribute too.
Interesting Ways to use Voicethread, Wordle and the Nintendo DS | ICT in my Classroom
It has been great to see the range of classroom ideas in the “Interesting Ways” series really expand and develop over time. It is always great to connect with a fellow educator and invite them to edit the various presentations. We are about to kick off a
The World Is Open: How Web Technology Is Revolutionizing Education - Curtis J. Bonk
Technological development and the Internet have opened up learning to the point where anyone can learn anything from anyone else at any time. To help explain this highly complex situation and its implications for education, both formal and informal, Curtis J. Bonk outlines ten key technology and learning trends. Using a model called "WE-ALL-LEARN," Dr. Bonk shows how technology has transformed educational opportunities for learners as well as of innovators from the worlds of technology and education that reveal the power of opening up the world of learning.
In the last six months, we've seen uploads from mobile phones to YouTube jump 1700%; just since last Friday, when the iPhone 3GS came out, uploads increased by 400% a day. This growth represents three things coming together: new video-enabled phones on the market, improvements to the upload flow when you post a video to YouTube from your phone, and a new feature on YouTube that allows your videos to be quickly and effortlessly shared through your social networks.
Pushing the Limits of Google’s Speech Recognition - Gadgetwise Blog - NYTimes.com
Last week I asked readers to pick up the phone and help me test a feature in Google’s new phone call management service that automatically transcribes voice mail messages. I encouraged creativity, and I got a lot. People called up and left all kinds of stuff for Google’s speech-recognition algorithms to puzzle over.
Pushing the Limits of Google’s Speech Recognition - Gadgetwise Blog - NYTimes.com
Last week I asked readers to pick up the phone and help me test a feature in Google’s new phone call management service that automatically transcribes voice mail messages. I encouraged creativity, and I got a lot. People called up and left all kinds of st
During March and April, we spent a day testing the major 3G services in 13 cities across the United States. Verizon's service showed a combination of speed and reliability, Sprint's results lent credence to its 'most dependable' claim, and AT&T's network showed fast upload speeds in most cities.
PlaySpan expands into new countries with online game prepaid cards | VentureBeat
PlaySpan said today it has expanded into Brazil, Turkey and other countries with its Ultimate Game Card, a prepaid card sold in stores that gives gamers credits to spend in online games. The expansion means that the Ultimate Game Card will now be available in thousands of new stores. Gamers can use the card to spend money in more than 1,000 online games, virtual worlds and social networks. These cards are popular among kids who are too young to have credit cards and in places where credit cards aren’t used.
PlaySpan expands into new countries with online game prepaid cards | VentureBeat
PlaySpan said today it has expanded into Brazil, Turkey and other countries with its Ultimate Game Card, a prepaid card sold in stores that gives gamers credits to spend in online games. The expansion means that the Ultimate Game Card will now be availab
To put it simply, Krumo is a replacement for print_r() and var_dump(). By definition Krumo is a debugging tool (initially for PHP4/PHP5, now for PHP5 only), which displays structured information about any PHP variable.
Informed consent and virtual worlds: The avatar will see you now | The Economist
THAT people undergoing medical procedures should give their informed consent might seem simple and uncontentious. But what if a patient has a mental impairment and his doctor does not have time to ensure he understands the proposed treatment? Those who try to look after the interests of such people say that, in practice, hard-pressed hospital staff often ask leading questions and the “consent” obtained is thus far from informed. A team of researchers led by Suzanne Conboy-Hill, a psychologist at the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton, England, reckon virtual environments could provide the solution. They are designing a virtual model of the hospital and, in October, it will receive its first “patients”—a group of 20 volunteers with learning disabilities who will visit it in order to find out what’s what and, in particular, to be talked through the sort of treatment they might be offered if they really were patients.
Augmented Environments Lab » A Sneak Peek at ARf, an AR Virtual Pet game for the iPhone
We’ve been working on an AR virtual pet game on the iPhone; it won’t be ready to release for a while, both because it’s not done, but also because Apple doesn’t have an official API for camera access (preventing us from putting this on the store). Right now, this is mostly an experiment with different kinds of interactions the game might use, as well as testing the AR technology. So, you can use the touch screen to direct ARf around, touch him and scratch him. Since there is a lot of interest in AR and games on the iPhone, we wanted to show folks what we’re up to and some of what’s possible.
Augmented Environments Lab » A Sneak Peek at ARf, an AR Virtual Pet game for the iPhone
We’ve been working on an AR virtual pet game on the iPhone; it won’t be ready to release for a while, both because it’s not done, but also because Apple doesn’t have an official API for camera access (preventing us from putting this on the store). Right
ARToolKit is the world’s most popular library for augmented reality application development. With a ten-year development pedigree, an active community edition with thousands of users, and ongoing development incorporating the latest results of augmented reality research, ARToolKit is the smart developers choice.
The World’s First Augmented Reality Browser. Layar is a free application on your mobile phone which shows what is around you by displaying real time digital information on top of reality through the camera of your mobile. By holding the phone in front of you like a camera, information is displayed on top of the camera display view. For all points of interest which are displayed on the screen, information is shown at the bottom of the screen. What do you see in the screen? On top of the camera image (displaying reality) Layar adds content layers. Layers are the equivalent of webpages in normal browsers. Just like there are thousands of websites there will be thousands of layers. One can easily switch between layers by selecting another via the menu button, pressing the logobar or by swiping your finger across the screen.
io9 - Two Augmented Reality Technologies That Are About To Change The World - Augmented Reality
Augmented reality is a technology futurists and scifi authors like Vernor Vinge have been talking about for decades. Now the tech has matured and is entering the market. Two videos of new products show you the near future
The open-source education software developed for the "$100 laptop" can now be loaded onto a $5 USB stick to run aging PCs and Macs with a new interface and custom educational software. "What we are doing is taking a bunch of old machines that barely run Windows 2000, and turning them into something interesting and useful for essentially zero cost," says Walter Bender, former president of the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) project. "It becomes a whole new computer running off the USB key; we can breathe new life into millions of decrepit old machines."
The open-source education software developed for the "$100 laptop" can now be loaded onto a $5 USB stick to run aging PCs and Macs with a new interface and custom educational software. "What we are doing is taking a bunch of old machines that barely run W
