Category Archives: ITP – Tisch – NYU

iPhone Classroom – Thesis Paper (draft)

Why (Motivation)

  • Worked in the mobile phone market for years
  • iPhone’s new paradigm in user interaction allows for new kinds of applications 
  • Open up a school in Brazil – interest in education
  • DYI culture
  • Could a cell phone be a platform for just in time learning?

What (Description)

  • Innovative use of proven educational methods combined with leading edge technology that is not yet a standard but might very well be the model of all future similar devices.
  • A curriculum designed for a mobile platform
  • A program to teach photography on a cell phone
  • Life long learning on the iPhone
  • How to, Want to, Need to, Just in Time
  • Self paced, interactive, participatory, useful, fun
  • Modular learning anywhere, anytime, anyone.

How (Future Implementation)

  • iPhone native application
  • Class creation tool
  • Other lessons that would effectively utilize this platform’s advantages:
    • Car user guides (changing tires, setting the clock)
    • Wood working tutorials
    • Music lessons/tutorials
    • Video making tutorials
    • Translation tool
    • Creative writting
    • Museum guides
    • Tourist guide application
    • Standardized tests practice

Who (Target Audience)

  • Learners with iPhones
  • Teachers who want to innovate

Where (User Scenarios)

  • Learner driven – already has the motivation to learn
  • Could also be used in a classroom environment
    • Connectivity, sync, and control for professors on student’s assignments
    • Sharing assignments, notes, and comments between students

When (Market opportunities)

  • Not the standard but offers a basis for future similar platforms
  • iPhone Classroom platform – create your own lesson
  • SWOT analysis
    • Strengths:
      • Be the first / early adopter
      • Interface
      • Mac OS programmer base
      • Portability to Mac OS
      • Modularity
      • Connectivity
      • Ease of use
    • Weaknesses:
      • Cost
      • Not a market standard
      • Easy to copy
    • Opportunities
      • Platform for a broader application
      • Research in this new interface/interaction mode
      • Wikipedia for learning meets Instructables
    • Threats
      • Other competing platforms
      • Cost
      • Laptop could become small and cheap enough to act as a subsititute

Conclusions

  • User testing results
  • Future development potentials

Project URLs

References

  • Books
    • How People Learn – Donovan Bransford Pellgrino
  • Other references
    • Low Residency Programs
    • Martin Owen – School of Education na University of Wales, Bangor
    • Graham Brown-Martin – Handheld Learning Ltd

Digital Imaging Reset Week 8

This week we talked about High Dynamic Range photography. 

You simply take 3 or 5 pictures altering the exposure from under to over exposed in steps. 
Then you combine the images which will have more information on the shadows and light areas which would normally would be too dark or too light to see detail. 
Here are some results:
I also took some pictures along the bike ride up to the George Washington bridge:

iPhone Classroom

So I’ve decided to really dive in into the iPhone Application development for my iPhone Classroom thesis project. What I had up to now was a web version – a prototype of the interface and user interaction. It did not give me the full extent of the iPhone’s interface capabilities, not to mention that you cannot turn the camera on from it. Pretty basic feature for a photography tutorial!
So I have been studying Apple’s Cocoa development environment (Objective-C) and the iPhone SDK. Slowly wrapping my head around the frameworks and how objects are handled and talk to each other within the iPhone environment. Very interesting and powerful.
I created these screen mock-ups to help me understand better all the elements I am going to have to build:

Digital Imaging Reset Week 7

This week we played some more with white balance.
The photos with the purple mat were to show that some colors are simply not possible to capture with a digital camera because they simply do not exist within the sensor’s color space.
The image processing software and hardware simply remaps the color to a color within its space.
You can get close but you will never get to the exact color with the current sensors we have today.

Thesis update

I have feverously working on my iPhone Classroom (new name) web application for the iPhone.

You may login using:
user: a@a.com
pwd: a
Or create your own 🙂 It’s all working!
Today I will present to outside reviewers who will comment on the presentation style and on the product itself.
I updated the presentation and this time I have rehearsed it a little bit more 🙂
Unfortunately you cannot see the videos on this web based PowerPoint.
If you really want to, you can see them here:

Thesis update again

My presentation today did not go as well as I would’ve have wanted… I did not rehearse the flow of exactly what I was going to say so I felt a little too loose in my train of thought.
With that as a motivation, I cranked out some more changes to the document I presented today and now feel that the structure of the presentation makes more sense and flows better.
HERE it is.

Digital Imaging Reset Week 5

This week week I decided to play a little more with the panorama – now using Canon’s PhotoStich software which works amazing for these kinds of projects. Here is a panorama picture stitched together and then converted to QuickTime VR which allows you to pan around the entire scenario. This was taken at the Christopher St. peer. Should have used a wider lens. It takes a little while to load completely (12Mb) start going to the left because for some reason they seem to load up first.


I also played around with some more depth of field and took some general pictures:

Thesis update video 2

Started coding the html interface mock-up following the iPhone’s specs. JavaScript monitors the iPhone orientation and changes the html dynamically. CSS styles are associated with each orientation – that is how I get the menu icons to be on top when the iPhone is in portrait and on the right when the iPhone is on landscape mode. Including video was also a bit of a hurdle but all figured out now – depending on the connection (WiFi vs Edge) the appropriate movie is shown – you actually have to put up 3 different files for each speed (the third one is for desktop viewing). Fortunately QuickTimePro does that automatically for you.