After much consideration I decided to drop this class to be able to focus on my thesis and some other parallel projects I am working on.
I am doing an internship at Sagatiba where I am implementing a mini CRM tool for them to organize their events, contacts, and promotional material.
I am also developing an application for a photo exhibit that will allow the visitors to call a number from their cell phones, select their language of preference, and then hear the description and comments of each photograph in the gallery. I will be using Asterisk – an open source platform that handles the incoming calls and voice recordings.
Finally, I set myself solid on the idea of an interactive and self paced series of photography
exercises aimed at improving your basic shooting techniques. These exercises are delivered to the user’s mobile phone. They can take the pictures with their camera phones or regular digital cameras. Each person is assigned to a small group of other users that are going through the exercises. A peer review mechanism is in place where you are able to give and get feedback on your results. My mission now is to be able to summarize this idea into a more cohesive and concise project…
Mobile Photography Tutorial Application
A mobile application with tutorials for taking better photographs with your mobile phone. A web site to process your images, manage them, and share with small groups of people in your group.
Description
An application on your mobile phone that gives you assignments to improve the quality of the pictures you take with your cell phone.
The application will analyze the “best” picture you took for that assignment and suggest improvements to it.
These suggestions or tips, depending on the assignment, will be automated or receive feedback from the members of your group.
Keywords
teaching, mobile, application, software, photography, web 2.0
External Project Link
http://lucaslongo.blogspot.com/search/label/thesis
Personal Statement
I have worked for a long time with mobile applications and believe that they still have not been explored to the maximum of its potential as a tool to facilitate new forms of interaction.
Background
Audience
People who own a camera-phone and is interested in taking better pictures with them.
User Scenario
Sign up – user gives us information about the cellphone or photo device they are using.
Assign to groups – user is informed that a group of 10 other people will be his “classmates” – they will critique each other’s work. Grouping people into smaller groups facilitates the task of “grading” the assignments and commenting on composition, quality and content.
Receive assignments – the assignments are sent out to the user’s cellphones. Each assignment has a specific goal it is trying to achieve. The pictures will be evaluated according to these goals.
Complete assignment – the user takes several pictures and then selects up to 3 pictures to submit for review.
Review – the application will evaluate the incoming pictures and make suggestions on how to improve the image according to what the content of the assignment was. In some cases the final part of the assignment is to comment and analyze the photos of your group according to the goals of the assignment.The reviews will be either using multiple-choice questions or voice recordings with comments.
Web – on the web you can go over your assignments, read comments made on your pictures and check your progress within the course.
Implementation
Mobile application – the interface the user will see on the phone. Have to figure out how to access the features of the camera in the phone.
Web – interface to sign up for the classes, show user’s work and interact with their classmates.
Curriculum – design what is going to be taught in each class.
Conclusion
References
How People Learn – Donovan Bransford Pellgrino
Wireless Generation
OLPC – Squeakland.org
Bob Tinker – Concord Consortium
Terc
Exploratorium (C.I.L.T)
Low Residency Programs
Brilliant Improvisation/Collective Performance
The full story.
The video:
Thesis – spin on initial idea
Mobile Class Management Platform
A web tool for teachers and students to collaborate inside and outside of class adding cell phones as a method to interact and update the system.
A mash up of blogs, wikis, forums, web albums, video blogs, and file sharing geared towards a classroom setting.
The tool that all ITP teachers would want to use.
The “basic” platform would be a web interface that allows teachers to manage the collaboration and sharing of students online. Sign up to mailing lists, forums, wikis and so on. Cellphones would be integrated to the platform’s functioning to allow for interactive exercises/activities/games for a class. A step-by-step interface allows the teacher to creates the rules, formats, and goals of the exercises.
Features:
– Publishing the syllabus
– Attendance
– Office hour sign up
– Lesson notes
– Homework assignments and posting
– Grading/comments
– Testing
– Polls
– Announcements
– Collaboration
– Content management tools
THESIS documentation 1
Mobile Platform for Classrooms
A mobile device, software and curriculum for teaching.
Description
A mobile device based curriculum that will facilitate the teaching process and enrich the classroom environment.
An example class: Photography
Each student has this mobile device that will be used to take and submit pictures during class, receive the professor’s assignments, comments, and grades as well as share the pictures and comments amongst each other.
The professor would have the “master” device that is capable of creating the assignments, sending them out, receive the pictures from the students, reply with voice recorded comments, and grade each student. This could potentially be done on a PC/Mac for convenience.
The devices will communicate via a wireless peer to peer network ideally.
Process:
Students get their assignment on the device.
Students go out and take pictures.
Each picture is automatically sent back to the teacher’s device.
The pictures are tagged with ambient sound, music being played on iPod, and GPS location.
The teacher replies to the student with his voice recorded comments.
Student takes more pictures or goes to the next assignment.
At the end of the class the teacher will give out each student’s grade based on their work.
The students can share the pictures and comments received between them after class.
Possibly develop into a platform with applications that facilitate and enrich the educational process in developing nations or in classrooms with no PCs or multimedia presentation tools.
Keywords
teaching, mobile, application, software, network,
External Project Link
http://lucaslongo.blogspot.com/search/label/thesis
Personal Statement
I have worked for a long time with mobile applications and believe that they still have not been explored to the maximum of its potential as a tool to facilitate new forms of interaction.
Background
Audience
Teachers and students in classrooms with no computers or any multimedia aid.
Teachers can use it to present multimedia content in class, assign, collect and grade assignments, give tests and quizzes.
Students can do research, homework, exchange notes, plan study groups and have fun with the device.
User Scenario
Example classes:
– photography course
– math course
Implementation
Master/slave Network
– The teacher’s phone controls all of the student’s phone when they are in the classroom.
– Students can also create networks with friends
– Auto sync features.
Homework tool
– create content, due date, distribute to students, auto collect on due date, grade – send grades
Test tool
– create test, distribute to students, auto-grade
Notes tool
– annotated during class, record audio/video, share notes, wiki
Study tool
– access quizzes, more reading material, class notes by teacher, student notes wiki, plan study groups, take fake tests with friends to see who gets it better.
Search and download classes
– A repository of classes you can search and download
An open source platform for creating lessons, presentations and apps.
Conclusion
References
How People Learn – Donovan Bransford Pellgrino
Wireless Generation
OLPC – Squeakland.org
Bob Tinker – Concord Consortium
Terc
Exploratorium (C.I.L.T)
Low Residency Programs
Digital Imaging Reset
This is another class I am taking this semester where we learn how digital cameras work at the chip/sensor level in order to take better quality pictures and not destroy them in the process.
The class is taught by Eric Rosenthal who has built cameras for NASA and DARPA!
The first assignment was to read the basics about digital photography and cameras and take some photos exploring what we had learned from the reading.
The most informative part of the reading for me was on the histograms – I never really learned how to read them. Now I think I understand. I shot a high contrast scene and shot first what I thought would be the optimal exposure and then looked at the histogram to see if I needed any adjustment. Turned out that my estimate was pretty good. I used spot metering to check the scene and then exposed between the high and low light area’s “correct” exposure.
I also played with depth of field. On the third photo I “inverted” the speed and aperture to get more depth of field.
Finally I tested the white balance settings on a sky scene as well as the ISO settings.
Time Vibrator contd.
Decided to go with a AA battery instead of the button battery on this version. The vibrator drains the button batteries very quickly and I couldn’t find a store that carried holders for them.
So I attached the switch to the AA battery holder in order to have a morse-code like controller.
Telling Time:
Initially the device would only tell the only the hour but the Haptic Clock by Che-Wei Wang solves the problem by having the hours vibrations longer, and the minutes vibrations shorter. You also want to “compress” the minutes into chunks to facilitate the counting. So I decided to group the minutes by tenths like this:
xx:00 to xx:10 = 1 vibration
xx:10 to xx:20 = 2 vibrations
xx:20 to xx:30 = 3 vibrations
xx:30 to xx:40 = 4 vibrations
xx:40 to xx:50 = 5 vibrations
xx:10 to xx:20 = 2 vibrations
xx:20 to xx:30 = 3 vibrations
xx:30 to xx:40 = 4 vibrations
xx:40 to xx:50 = 5 vibrations
Also when delivering the times, adding a rhythm to each number would allow for a telling the time but feeling the rhythm of the number instead of having to count each single vibration.
Time Vibrator
Here’s the first prototype of the Blind Man’s watch we have to design for “Designing for Constraints”.
Using a vibrating motor and a small battery I was able to enclose them into a pill shaped plastic enclosure that came with my ear-phones. The switch is to manually activate the vibrating motor – eventually this would be replaced by a time circuitry that would vibrate the motor according to the time of day it was.
New Web Site!!
So my new site is up – probably still a lot of broken links and spelling errors – well – it’s a constant work in progress. Let me know what you think or if you find something “broken”. There are still some projects on the ITP section that I have to complete but for the most part it’s in place 🙂
Thesis – first entry
Here are my ideas for my thesis so far:
Photography Class Platform
A mobile device, software and curriculum for teaching photography.
Each student has this mobile device that will be used to take and submit pictures during class, receive the professor’s assignments, comments, and grades as well as share the pictures and comments amongst each other.
The professor would have the “master” device that is capable of creating the assignments, sending them out, receive the pictures from the students, reply with voice recorded comments, and grade each student. This could potentially be done on a PC/Mac for convenience.
The devices will communicate via a wireless peer to peer network ideally.
Process:
- Students get their assignment on the device.
- Students go out and take pictures.
- Each picture is automatically sent back to the teacher’s device.
- The pictures are tagged with ambient sound, music being played on iPod, and GPS location.
- The teacher replies to the student with his voice recorded comments.
- Student takes more pictures or goes to the next assignment.
- At the end of the class the teacher will give out each student’s grade based on their work.
- The students can share the pictures and comments received between them after class.
Possibly develop into a platform with applications that facilitate and enrich the educational process in developing nations or in classrooms with no PCs or multimedia presentation tools.
SPiRT (Subconscious Picture Rating Tool)
Our private picture libraries are ever growing. Using eye tracking, I propose to rate your pictures by simply looking at them. The more your eye stays on one picture, the higher the rating it gets.
I propose using a head mounted display with eye and head tracking to show the photos in a 3D world. The user would be standing at the center of a slowly rotating globe. The pictures are displayed on the walls of this globe. The user simply looks around at the pictures, which are changing with each rotation.
The final result is a set of pictures that the user looked at the most.
iRateMusic
A music rating tool. A random 10 seconds clip of two songs are played to the user in sequence. The user then selects which one they prefer. After a while of “playing” iRate – songs will be rated according to comparing the winners.
KaleidoSound
A kaleidoscope that generates sounds/music according to what the user is seeing. The “analogue” visuals will generate digital sounds.