Hello fellow SIFers,
I know people have been wondering for a way to make videos more…fun? Yeah that’s the word. Because I don’t think many people want to sit through a video of someone talking about an event or idea. You also don’t want to make more work that is overtly complicated.
Sooooo I found a library that deals exactly with that. It’s called p5JS. It pretty much gives users the power to interact with video. You can view an example of it here.
p5JS is a spin off from Processing, which deals with accessing artists, coders, and other visual-relation fields together. It’s a broader scope than just dealing with interaction such as quizzes or tests. It encompasses a whole new idea of digital literacy by imploring the user to learn from mistakes and practice on skills they already learned in class.
So basically, it’s sort of returning to us 90s kids generation of primary learning. Video shows like Dora, or Sesame Street, or Blues Clues where learning through video meant waiting for user to make a suggested input and practice on that input throughout time with repetition.
I guess that method of learning through video got lost somewhere between elementary and middle school, but hey we can always do it with the next generation of kids.
On a related note, P5JS and Processing are both part of a wider gain of web technologies focusing on creating new ways for people to express things in the browser: HTML5.
I’ll talk about that in a later blog post, but for now I’m off to go play around with WebGL stuff.
Until next time, SIFers.
Could you possibly go into more detail on how this would work for a non-computer geek haha? I’m kinda interesting in possibly applying this to one of the projects I am working on.
Well, it’s sort of like real-time learning.
Say you have a class about training kids how to approach strangers for a fundraiser or something. So, the child has to ring the doorbell and initiate the sale. You would put in something like this and allow the child to click on it, in the video, and also get some responses back via a multiple choice question. You can other elements like a red box, and boom you got a house.
Obviously, this is a simplified version, but if you look around the website described in the post, they have dozens of examples that you can use.
Hopefully that answers some questions. Thanks!
That sounds awesome! Would you be able to able this sort of application to create interactive videos about technology spaces like the CURVE for instance? I guess so the viewers could look around the space virtually?
Definetly! However, it would require a new way of thinking and approaching for different pedagogues.
What I mean by that is we have to film in a specific way and actually think about what the user will do once given the opportunity to answer a question or act on a specific object. If you can provide certain scenarios that will work around CURVE, then that would help a lot.
Perhaps different mini activities that can help them get a feel for the InteractWall, 4K, & Bloomberg Terminals, which can encourage them to check them out at the CURVE?
Sounds good. Email me or talk to me in person if you want to hash out details.