3D Printers

I read this article about a 3D printer that was recently unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show and couldn’t help but get a bit excited.  Sure, as the article points out, at $1300, this “affordable” printer may not be affordable for everyone.  (It’s not for me.)  But it’s getting closer to affordable.

The notion of being able to create or download a 3D image file on my computer, send it to the printer via a USB cable, and have the real object in my hand a few minutes (or a couple of hours) later is pretty amazing — and I’m not even in a business that does any rapid prototyping, nor do I have a burning need for my own custom designed neon ABS plastic chess set, two of the most often cited uses for such a device.

The best part will be watching the prices come down on these.  They are a bit expensive now, but in five years, I could see myself forking over $500 for something like this.  Especially if the media that is “printed” comes down in price as well.

I’m sure, in addition to being a fun, novel tool with which to experiment, I could find more and more uses for it once I had one.  Kids break one part of their favorite toy?  Make another!  This gadget were exactly the same but with a built-in loop for hanging it from a hook?  No problem!  Like something I have?  I’ll scan it and email it to you and you can print one for yourself (almost) instantly!  It’s a pretty exciting future.

Mashups in Minutes

“Ever notice how the Fishheads song sounds kind of like Phantom of the Opera?”  Um, no, I hadn’t, but when Greg, whose desk is not far from mine asked me this question, I became curious.  I hummed each tune and I had to admit there were some similarities.

I opened a YouTube clip of each song (Fishheads and Music of the Night from Phantom of the Opera) and after a quick listen, I also thought there were some parallels that warranted further investigation.  I also found that I could play the Fishheads song, then switch over to another tab in my browser and watch the Phantom clip on mute, thus integrating the audio from one with the video from another.  Interesting.  And, when the Phantom’s mouth movements happened to sync to the Fishheads lyrics, pretty funny.  But, could I capture this hilarity for others to enjoy?  Enter Screenr.

Screenr is an online screen capture service that I’d seen but never used before.  Turns out it couldn’t be easier.  Go to Screenr.com, click on the “Launch Screen Recorder Now!” button, and drag the red rectangle over the part of your screen that you want to record.  From there, just click record for up to 5 minutes of free video.  It was a bit tricky for me to sync the start of the video and audio to the start of the recording, and I had to adjust the volume level so that the recording was not too loud, but after a couple of tries I managed to work it out pretty well.  See for yourself.

Unfortunately, WordPress, which this blog is built in, does not currently provide a way to embed Screenr content.  I should also be able to upload the video to YouTube from Screenr, but that feature isn’t working for me.  So, instead of embedding the video in my blog, you’ll just have to follow the link.

So, that’s how I turned an office distraction (no offense, Greg!) into an opportunity to try out a technology I’ve been meaning to check out.  And, I’m pleased to report, Screenr was extremely easy to use on the fly without practice or instructions.

Can this become a project for your classroom?  Perhaps.  It might be very interesting to ask students to create a Screenr video that combines the audio from one video and the video from another.  Because Screenr is web / browser based, there are very few editing options other than “record” and “stop,” but this simplicity can really flatten out the learning curve.  It would be interesting to have students present and discuss their mashups.  But, please, no Wizard of Oz vs. Pink Floyd.

Bulletin Board 2.0

An article in our student newspaper on Pinterest.com caught my eye this morning.  It is described as an online pinboard for sharing photos, recipes, and other content.  Content is shared when users pin content from someone else’s pinboard onto their own.

In this way, Pinterest is a bit like Tumblr or even Twitter in that content can echo around and be amplified as more users repost it.  Interestingly, most (if not all) of the content is image-based.  In some ways, this is limiting because a recipe is actually a picture of food that you can click on to get to the site that originally posted the recipe.  In effect, Pinterest actually feels more like a different interface for photosharing websites like Flickr.  There are lots of interesting boards that are pictures organized by color or by different topics.

From a quick glance, it seems like Pinterest is a very good internet meme incubator.  I’ve already been sucked into looking at pictures (and the blog posts they link to) that include hilariously ugly knitted shorts and a portrait of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. made from over 4000 Rubik’s cubes.  There are also plenty of funny and inspirational signs and slogans as well as the requisite cute and funny pictures of kittens and puppies.

Could Pinterest be useful to ESL students?  Perhaps.  It could provide a way for them to store and organize web content that can be shared within the classroom community.  It’s very smooth and clean and the opportunity to interact with the site-wide community could be interesting.  And the site terms and conditions prohibit nudity and hateful content, which can be reassuring for teachers.  If a course is not using a web-based course management system, Pinterest could be a quick and interesting way to build a community that could generate some interesting discussion.  But is it the next Big Thing?  Probably not.

Interactive Fiction

If you’re like me, one of your first computer game experiences was with an interactive fiction text-based game.  Zork was probably the most popular, but I discovered the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy game first (before I knew it was a book.)  In fact, I had never played Zork until quite recently when I encountered a version of it on Frotz, which I discovered as an iPhone application.  Within Frotz, one can play a wide variety of text-based adventure games.

If you’ve never played one of these games, there really isn’t much to learn.  Players are typically presented with a description of their character’s surroundings followed by a prompt.  Players can type simple directions at the prompt, such as “go north” or “pickup phone.” This process repeats with the game presenting the results of the previous command or a description of the new scene if the player has moved.  From there, the player enters further directions, and the game continues.

Obviously, the focus of the game is the writing as there are typically no graphics involved.  These games also have a rich tradition of Easter Eggs and snarky responses, particularly when commands are malformed or not recognized.  As the player proceeds through the game, objects can be collected (such as a key) that can later be used to solve a problem or make progress through the game (such as unlocking a door.)

These games are now rediscoverable thanks to new technologies.  Not only that, but it has also become very easy to create a game with virtually zero programming involved.  Two examples of tools that can be used to create interactive fiction are Twine and Inform7.

Twine is the simpler of the two.  Resulting stories are interactive in the way that Choose Your Own Adventure stories are interactive, but they use linked texts to allow the reader to progress in a non-linear way.  Examples of stories written using Twine can be played on gimcrackd.com.

Inform7 is much more complex, but the results are actual interactive text-based adventure games.  Elements can be dragged and dropped to create the relationships that form the basis of the story.  Examples of some of the best interactive text adventures can be found in this article on makeuseof.com.

I haven’t used either of these tools yet, but I’m curious about what ESL students might make of them (and make with them).  The process of writing can be a challenge in itself and, if they are not familiar with interactive fiction, explaining it would be an additional difficulty.  But by collaborating in small groups, there might be some interesting possibilities for collaborating and giving peer feedback.  At the very least, interactive text adventure games can provide ESL students with a rich source of input.  And because the syntax for interacting with the game is so simplified, even intermediate level learners can play them.

I plan to give Inform7 a try to see how easy it is to use.  If you’ve used it, or know of other similar tools, leave a comment.

Video Games as Interactive Texts

These are my slides from my Ohio TESOL 2011 presentation titled “How to use videogames as interactive texts for language learning.”  Comments are welcome.

My Favorite Data Visualization

I’m a visual person, so it’s no surprise that I like to see data represented visually.  One of my favorite data visualizations is the one above from a blog called Flip Flop Fly Ball.  The blog focuses on baseball, but the website it’s hosted on features lots of other quirky data visualizations including a graph of how many smarties are in the tube and a representation of the relationships between characters in the movie Love Actually.

I’m not really a big fan of baseball, but I do like sports and the discussion and statistics they generate.  This graph crams in a lot of information.  World Series winners from 1995 to 2009 are represented in pink (losers are in purple).  Teams that had a better regular season record than the champions are above and those with a worse record are below (teams with identical records all appear in the same box); National League teams are in yellow; American League teams are in white; and wild card teams are in italics.

If this information were all presented in columns, it would be a bit hard to decipher.  But shifting each column to align the winners puts the data in a new light.  Whenever I think of this site, this is the data visualization I think of first.  I’m not sure if there is a way to apply a similar approach to data generated in a classroom, but I imagine it would give a different perspective on students’ performance from the traditional bell curve.

Take a look around the site and you’ll get lots of different ideas for ways in which to represent data.  You’ll probably also learn a few things about baseball and maybe find something that would get your ESL students talking.

Wear Your IWB to Work

A wearable computer won’t make you a cyborg, but it will get you one step closer.  A new project out of Carnegie Melon University allows you to turn any surface into a touchscreen, including your body.  Read the article or watch the video below.

Essentially, the system combines a Microsoft Kinect and a pocket-sized projector for a relatively smooth multi-touch, multi-surface user experience.  The downside?  This is what you have to wear:

Is it worth it?  Probably not.  Yet.  Good luck wearing one of these through an airport without attracting attention.  It probably wouldn’t even be easy to have a natural interaction with another human being without them being slightly distracted.

For those attracted to having your playlist projected on your forearm (instead of on the screen you’re holding in the hand at the end of said forearm) I’d advise you to wait a few years for Moore’s Law to shrink this down to something that will fit into the brim of a baseball cap, which, come to think of it, might be even creepier.

Flickr is Saving the Whales

Flickr is a popular online photo sharing website that allows users to attach information to the pictures such as keyword tags, date, time, and location the picture was taken, and even the kind of camera that took the picture.  Although pictures can be made private, many are uploaded publicly.  This online public database is now being used to help save the whales.

I first came across this project on the CNN website.  People are using pictures of whales, particularly pictures of their tails which have unique markings that can be used to identify individual whales, combined with the date and location information of the pictures to track whales’ migration.  One whale that was tracked via Flickr was found to have a longer migration route than any other previously recorded migration route.  These citizen scientists are helping further scientific research.

Crowdsourcing solutions to problems is no longer uncommon, particularly via games.  Newspapers have made a game out of combing through online documents on government spending, thereby turning readers into investigators.  Fold It is a game in which players twist and untwist actual molecular structures to further science in ways that computer modelling cannot.  Jane McGonigal has created a game called Evoke that challenges a community of players to share and evaluate solutions to the world’s problems.  The U.S. Navy has adopted a similar approach to fighting piracy.

Can language teachers and learners make use of crowdsourcing?  Of course.  Forvo.com, a pronunciation dictionary created by users, is one example.  Creating an online dictionary that includes pronunciations for every word in a language would be a nearly impossible task for one person, which is why it took a crowd of hundreds to create Forvo (which includes pronunciations for scores of languages.)

Can language teachers create similar games for language learning?  Perhaps.  Julie Sykes has created a location-aware game called Mentira which sends students into an actual Spanish-speaking neighborhood near the University of New Mexico campus to solve a fictional mystery set decades in the past.  Students who have finished the game are now involved in writing and rewriting it to add more detail and different possible outcomes.

Given the game-like nature of language learning (learners learn skills to level up) there are lots of options for teachers– from encouraging students to become involved in the above activities to creating new games for students.  If you know of other examples, leave them in the comments.

Geo Games

I have friends and family who really enjoy the boardgame Risk.  We had the game as a kid and I would play with it, but not by the “rules.”  I made my own game by moving pieces around and rolling the dice from time to time.  The map both fascinated and confused me (Alberta goes all the way to the Pacific Ocean?) and the colorful little pieces inspired several different games.  A map is a natural game board.

Fast-forward to the present: computer games have become ubiquitous (Ever kill time playing a game on your computer or phone?) and we rely on Google maps and GPS devices to get us to where we want to go.

Fast-forward to the future: Computer applications that we interact with are beginning to mash up GIS and other data.  (Ever check in to a real place using Foursquare or Facebook?)  Games are no exception.

Imagine playing Risk with the borders and armies from 100 or 1000 years ago.  Or Monopoly based on real utilities and real estate values.  Or Farmville with real agricultural data.  Or Oregon Trail with weather and census data from specific dates throughout history.

Ola Ahlqvist, a professor of Geography at Ohio State, is involved in a project to build the infrastructure to make these kinds of games possible.  I’ve talked with Ola several times about his games, but his presentation below is a pretty good summary of the process.

This is a great example of learning through games and simulations.  Players can see how different factors affect the outcome of the game — develop hyphotheses, then change their strategy for playing the game to test them.  Of course, this is how learning occurs outside of games, but by making a game out of a real map, the learning becomes more compelling.

ELTU Unconference

We’re about a week and a half away from the fourth annual Exploring Learning Technologies Unconference (ELTU4).  This year, we’ve moved the event to the start of the academic year because the spring was becoming crowded with other conferences and events.  So, on Friday, October 14, we meet again from 9am to 1:30pm to unconference.

What is an unconference?  There are lots of different variations, from Open Space to various camps (FooCamp, Barcamp, Mashup Camp, etc. — see Wikipedia for more.)  Our variant resembles a traditional conference in may ways — there are meeting areas for different breakout sessions that begin every hour –  but the biggest difference is that none of the content is set in advance of the meeting.

We spend the first half hour with introductions and generating session topics.  From there, the group negotiates which topics go in which time slots and we begin.  Being a technology-themed unconference, we use some technology to facilitate this process: we project the session grid on screens around the room so everyone can see and participate in the process.  We also set up a wiki in advance with one page that lists the schedule and links to one page per session so someone in each session can take notes.  (Visit http://go.osu.edu/eltu to see the wikis from the last three unconferences.)

Once organized, the unconference runs a lot like a regular conference, though participants are encouraged to move between sessions as a way of cross-pollinating the various discussions.  In fact, we have traditionally hosted the unconference in one big open space or computer lab in order to facilitate this movement.

The beauty of the process is that, if everything works as intended, the discussions are all appealing to those in attendance because they were generated only by those in attendance (instead of presenters who submitted an abstract months in advance and then failed to attend the conference.)

The effect is intentionally a bit like the hallway conversations you have at a traditional conference — when you actually get to talk to someone with similar interests to you instead of just watching a speaker read their PowerPoint slides.  By attracting interesting people from across campus and throughout Ohio, the discussion at the unconference is always a good one.

I’d recommend the format to any organization interested in hosting a stimulating conversation.  I’d also welcome you to our next unconference on Friday, October 14 from 9am to 1:30pm.  Details are available at http://go.osu.edu/eltu and registration is available (and free!) at http://eltu4.crowdvine.com.