Will The White House Go Cutting Edge?

Eye-opening post about the Obama tech team trying to make sense of the antiquated technology in The White House.

Britannica Wikifies

Why?

Creating Multiple Scenes with Storytelling Alice

I just had a great week teaching 6th graders how to program 3D animations with Storytelling Alice. (See here for more about the program.) But they also taught me a lot, because there were things I couldn't figure out how to do and their discoveries put it together for me. The biggest was how to create multiple scenes. Kelleher provides a sample animation you can access in the help section that sort of explains how, but wasn't explicit enough for me to get it. So here's how:

1. First, understand that the default method, 'World.scene 1 method,' must be used as the method in which the first scene is scripted and an organizing method that will play all of the other scenes in your story.
2. Add a few objects and characters to your first scene and click 'done.' You can go back and add more later.
3. Program an action for one character in the first scene so you have something to see when you play it.
   
4. Now create the second scene by clicking 'create new scene' and call it 'scene 2.'
5. Add a character to it.
6. Now change your current scene tripod to opening scene tripod and try playing the animation. You will see that the first scene plays but the second doesn't. We'll fix that.
   
7. Up in your object tree click on the world object. You'll see the scene 1 method and scene 2 method below the tree. Drag the scene 2 method into the script area of the scene 1 method, at the bottom of what you already scripted. In this way, the actions of the first scene will play and then the second scene will follow.
   
8. Now edit the scene 2 method and before any action in the scene occurs direct the camera to orient to that scene by clicking the camera in the object tree and dragging the 'camera orient to...' tile to the top of scene 2 method's script. Choose 'scene 2's tripod' in the context menu that pops up.
9. Try playing the animation again and you'll see that the second scene now plays.
   
10. Between scenes the camera swings wildly from one scene to the next. You can direct the camera to fade out before it changes orientation and fade back in when it's pointing at the second scene so you don't see the transition.
11. If you want a title first, click the tab for the first scene in the scripting area, click the camera in the object tree and drag the 'camera show title' tile before the first action in scene 1's script.

You can program as many scenes as you want this way. The amazing revelation to me about this is that now I can see how the program allows you to direct not only the characters in the scenes but the camera, lights, and titles, giving you a lot more control than I realized. My students really took off with this once we all put it together.

The Greening of the Web is Dark

A student of mine recently introduced me to Earthle, powered by Google so you have the same results, same options, but it's black. That's so you'll use less energy while you're searching. It's a great idea. I think more of the web should get darker to promote energy conservation. #000000 instead of #FFFFFF.

Photosynth

Microsoft has come up with something really amazing in its research labs called Photosynth. I learned about it from this TED talk with Blaise Aguera y Arcas. He demos the software, showing how it syncs photos of the same geographic location so you can manipulate the object of the photos in 3D passing through the lens of each picture. The pictures come from all over the web, from devices as varied as camera phones to high resolution cameras so as you pull each one into focus you can explore its specific resolution and visual character. The great quote from Aguera y Arcas comes when he compares the experience of changing one's point of view from a distant perspective to an extreme closeup to manipulating paper. He calls paper "an inherently multi-scale medium," which puts the finger on why e-paper could never take the place of physical paper. No matter what happens inside the screen, the metal and liquid crystal provide an impermeable barrier between you and the object you'd like to manipulate. Photosynth does bring you a little closer to that experience, though.

Open Source Electronics

I've found another reason to love the Cricket. The electronics are open source, or at least some of the components are. I was having a lot of problems with wires coming out of the connectors that fasten them into the Cricket's ports. I received a bunch of crimped wires from the manufacturer that I had to splice onto the wires that came out until I started running out of those. Then I made a discovery in an unlikely source. My cordless phone battery was dying, so I went to Radio Shack to get a new one. It turned out they had changed the model and while the battery the sold was the same shape, voltage and amps as my bad one, the connector into the phone was a different shape. But the battery wires fastened into the connector in exactly the same way as the wires on the Cricket do. It turns out the crimps are a standard method of making a non-soldering wire connection. So all I have to do to fix the wires that come out is re-crimp them. There's even a page on the Molex web site (the manufacturer of the crimps) that shows how to make a good crimp.

Facebook

Now I know why Facebook is so popular. It's the ease with which people can communicate in multimedia formats. The only one that's missing is audio messages. Text, pictures, and video are all there mixed together. The brilliance is how easy it is to relate objects to one another through comments, tags, and probably other ways I don't know about in a very fluid way.:)

Code Comments Are Essential

My 9th graders have been navigating a paper road with their Super Crickets for a few classes now armed only with the knowledge of how to create a long sequence of commands that hard code every turn and straightway. No sensors, yet. So their programs are long. I finally introduced them to the practice of adding comments to code. They were so thankful to have a way to keep track of where each turn in the road was in their programs. I realized how essential comments are.

Problems are important

This is the first year I've worked with the Cricket Logo microcomputer and I'm encountering some interesting problems. The crickets are actually increasing the problems quite a bit over the Mindstorms RCXs I used before so it's fortunate I'm teaching 9th grade instead of 7th. The crickets have some finicky hardware and to make things worse I've chosen to use Jackal, a finicky program, because it's the only one that provides syntax coloring for Logo. So today my class was getting the simple vehicles they had built to stay on a road course I made on white butcher paper. Four of the teams were successfully navigating the road little-by-little and three were stuck getting a single motor to turn on. So I trouble-shot with them. Here's what we did:

• send the beep command. Success? Yes
• send a, on. Success? No
• maybe the batteries are dying, not strong enough to power the motor, so change them. Success? No
• send it b, on for the second motor. Success? Yes, hah!
  
• maybe it's the actual motor, so switch it for another. Success? No
• maybe it's the wires connecting the motor to a, so switch the 9 volt adapters, try a, on Success? YES!
• try b, on. Success? No!
• So the wire or circuit board on the 9 volt adapter is bad
  

Replacing it worked and the students were happy campers. In the end, problems are good, because now I know even the 9 volt adapters can be faulty.

How to install Storytelling Alice

It's almost as easy as 1, 2, 3, in that you have to install 3 things. Kelleher only made a version for PC and has no plans to make one for any other platform. First download the Storytelling Alice zip file and unzip it anywhere you want it, like your desktop. The program runs on Java and needs the Java 3D API and Media Platform to work. You can find the 3D API here (look for "j3d-1_5_2-windows-i586.exe") and run it from your desktop. Finally, download the Java Media Platform here (after clicking download you choose your platform).

UPDATE (7-2-09): In reinstalling SA on an image for a new model of Dells I realized that the Java software is only necessary for rendering the 3D content in an HTML page. You only need that if you're publishing a story as HTML, which you do from the file menu. If you don't plan on using this (and you may not as it doesn't support the speech bubbles or any audio) then all you need is SA itself!