Next EMAWD Meeting :: 10/10 @ 2PM @ FableVision :: Exploring Educational Websites

Our next EMAWD meeting will be this Friday, October 10th @ 2PM at FableVision. We will be taking a look at some examples of existing educational software and websites. Basically, this will be an open-ended forum and opportunity to look at some software/technologies that are out there. My hope is that we will get some good discussion about common problems and solutions with existing technologies.

Please bring:
Any kids’ software that you love/hate
URLs for cool kids’ websites
Technical challenges you’ve been up against in creating software
An appetite for cookies

Directions: http://www.fablevision.com/info/directions/index.html

-Brian

Next EMAWD Meeting :: 9/12 @ 2PM @ FableVision :: Brian Peltonen on Evolvables

Our next EMAWD meeting will be next Friday, September 12th @ 2PM. Brian Peltonen will be discussing Evolvables, a video game that lets children create physically simulated creatures and obstacle courses. As the creatures' bodies and behaviors are defined by a series of parameters, the creatures can be evolved in the environment of a given obstacle course while the user is away from the machine.

Brian will also be discussing Proteus, the multiplatform engine that Evolvables runs on.

Cookies will be served.

Directions

-Brian

Next Meeting :: 8/8 @ 2PM :: FableVision :: Scratch and Squeak

Our next EMAWD meeting will be next Friday, August 8th @ 2PM. Margarita Dekoli will be discussing Scratch, a visual programming language that she helped to develop while at the MIT Media Lab. She will also be discussing the programming language Squeak, an implementation of the language, SmallTalk.

If you get a chance before the presentation, definitely check out Scratch. It's truly amazing. This should be a great presentation -- and there'll be cookies!

Let me know if you’ll be there!

-Brian

Media Lab Goodies :: Eric Rosenbaum :: 071108

This month’s EMAWD meeting was fantastic! Thanks, Eric for bringing some really cool stuff to the meeting -- it was inspirational.


Attendees

• Eric Rosenbaum – Research Assistant @ Lifelong Kindergarten in the MIT Media Lab
• Brian Grossman – FableVision Technical Director
• Brian Peltonen – In a small startup creating games for artificial life
• Brice Norton – Producer @ Six Red Marbles
• Bob Flynn – FableVision Lead Designer
• Jay LaCouture – FableVision Programmer
• Joel Rosenberg – was at Museum of Science, and Chemistery teacher in Boston Public School System, interested in Science Education
• Jonah Elgart – FableVision Freelance Artist
• Karen Bresnahan – FableVision Executive Producer
• Keith Zulawnik – FableVision Artist
• Matt Bargar – FableVision Developer
• Matt Rubin – FableVision Intern Technical
• Naomi Greenfield – FableVision Producer
• Neil Robbin – Flash / Flex Freelancer
• Ryan McNulty – FableVision Developer
• Shannon Meneses – FableVision Producer
• Sharon Emerson – Creative Director

Lifelong Kindergarten Overview
http://llk.media.mit.edu/
Trying to take the way people learn in kindergarten (exploring, making things, etc...) and trying to extend that approach across lifetime. The thought is that not enough learning happens that way.


$100 Laptop - XO
http://laptop.org/
Mission Statement: “To create educational opportunities for the world's poorest children by providing each child with a rugged, low-cost, low-power, connected laptop with content and software designed for collaborative, joyful, self-empowered learning.”
Some Features:

• Rubber keyboard – allows it to work in harsh conditions – can swap out for other languages
• Display can rotate so can use in e-book mode
• Screen can switch to high resolution B&W mode so can read in light
• Doesn’t use a lot of power
• Wireless Networking – all machines are set up so that the XO’s can automatically create a ‘mesh network’ (decentralized network) so that people can share an Internet connection and connect to each other w/o needing to communicate with the outside world.

Applications being created with focus on creativity, expressiveness, and play.
They have announced plans for the XO V2. Early designs show it smaller w/ 2 touch screens.


mmmTsss
http://web.mit.edu/~eric_r/Public/mmmtsss/
This is Eric’s implementation of a cool improvisational music app. It allows for the creation of layered music and can be used by a novice user with no musical knowledge.
It’s built in C++ using Open Frameworks (http://www.openframeworks.cc/) - like Processing in C++. We played with this thing in the office after the meeting — it’s crazy fun!


Scratch 4 Second Life

• Scratch – (http://scratch.mit.edu/ ) Visual programming language for kids where can snap together objects to create projects. Written in Squeak, a version of SmallTalk, a pure Object Oriented language.
• Second Life – (http://secondlife.com/) - 3D Virtual World

The goal of this project is to try to empower people by giving them easy ways to program and to try to find other ways to bring Scratch to people. Users can create programs in Scratch and bring them into Second Life. Currently it’s very complex to program for second life and this is one way to make it easier.

Eric had to create a scaled down ‘dialect’ of the Scratch language. You can create scratch projects and run a LindenScript code-generator which outputs code that can be copied into Second Life. This code, when run, will allow the users to see their Scratch project in Second Life.

Ideally want to get people to ‘program collaboratively and allow people to see the code used to create a SecondLife item and modify it. Eric thinks this would be a great tool to get into Club Penguin.


Lego Stuff
Eric showed us some of the cool Lego projects he has worked on in the Lifelong Kindergarten group. Lifelong Kindergarten has collaborated with Lego for many years. They have been thinking of creating stuff for little kids.

• The first thing Eric showed us was a clear brick with an LED (actually three: RGB) that changes color based on someone’s voice.
• Then he showed us another brick that changes based on its orientation in space using an accelerometer.
• Then he showed us bricks that can communicate with each other, passing their color (with a slight phase shift) from on brick to another.
• Finally, Eric showed us a Musical Squencer made with Legos. By placing the 2x1 Lego in the eight spots, it will cycle through, playing a different not based on the color (actually the resistor within it) of the Lego piece. Looky here: http://youtube.com/watch?v=eL7FS8KantE
  

Note: Eric is currently trying to come up with concept for a Master’s Thesis. He’s particularly interested in Collaborative Programming. If you share the interest, definitely let him know!


Next month we’ll have a presentation on Scratch and get a taste of Squeak from Margarita Dekoli.

-Brian

Eric Rosenbaum, a Research Assistant from the Lifelong Kindergarten group at the MIT Media Lab will be presenting lots of fun goodies at our next EMAWD Meeting this Friday (6/11) @ 2PM

He’ll be sharing:

• The $100 Laptop XO and some fun things to do with it
• MmmTsss: playful musical looping software
• S4SL: Scratch for Second Life
• Lego stuff: this will be a surprise!

The meeting will be at FableVision (http://www.fablevision.com/info/directions/index.html).

Cookies will be served.

See you there!

-Brian

Species Explorer :: Max Antinori :: 6/13/08

We had a good turnout (and great assortment of cookies and snacks from Chinatown... including the dreaded pork cookies) for Max Antinori's presentation of his Species Explorer project.

Here's some notes:

=====================
Max :: Species Explorer
http://www.speciesexplorer.org

• Max likes outdoorsy stuff and wanted something for tree and/or animal identification. He decided to build something for all species
• Species Explorer is a site with tools to record nature sightings (plants and animals)
• FlashLite didn’t seem adequate, so this seemed like a good way to get into Flex
• Goal: use technology for getting outdoors and learning about wildlife. Focus on young people or kids w/ parents. There’s a current movement to connect young people w/ outdoors.

Maps

• Google recently came up with AS3 API. Wasn’t available when Species Explorer was in development initially
• Species Explorer uses Modest Maps (http://www.modestmaps.com/) which hooks into tiles from multiple maps. Works with AS3 and AS2. Supposedly works with FlashLite.
• Currently hooking into Microsoft Maps.

Flex

• The main application was built with Flex
• When upload an image, it gets resized with PHP’s GD.

Animal Taxonomy

• Enter the name, searches against ITIS’s (http://www.sp2000.org/) database, which has been entered in SpeciesExplorer.org’s database.
• The site searches Flickr based on the latin name to get up to three images for the animals.
• Also, it links off to Wikipedia based on Latin name, which seems to be pretty effective.
• Potentially looking for another partner for species information (e.g. http://www.eol.org/)

Facebook

• Additionally, there’s a Facebook application for displaying the data.

Chumby

• Application built for Chumby as well

Data Communication (future thoughts)

• May use AMPPHP and maybe Swix (which will work with Flash Lite). Also BlazeDS is a free, open-source version of Live Cycle Data Services that close to real-time data communication.

AS3

• Consensus that e4x is much better for working with XML.
• Joe Berkovitz created MVCS (S = services) that uses a design pattern that’s helpful for setting up Flex apps. This was used in Species Explorer to help keep it scalable.

=====================

Next month (7/11), Eric Rosenbaum will be presenting. More information on what will be covered soon...

-Brian

Next Meeting :: 6/13 @ 2PM :: FableVision

Our next EMAWD meeting will be next Friday, June 13th @ 2PM. Max Antinori will be presenting on his independent project, Species Explorer, a combination of web-based and mobile tools for recording and sharing nature observations.

The focus will be on the demo of the web-based component which has been built in Flex 3, and uses various technologies, including:

* Modest Maps
* Flickr API
* PHP on backend
* mySQL for species and observation data

Max will give a demonstration and overview of the project as well as dig into some of the technical issues. Take a look at his site and some info about it:

• The Project
• Max’s Past Presentation
• Adobe Site of the Day
• Additional Coverage

This should be a great presentation.

Let me know if you’ll be there!

-Brian