Category Archives: Atlanta connections

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Fun With Digital Signage

  October 26, 2014 , ,

Hey all! Just wanted to give a quick update on what we’re doing with digital signage. In addition to trying out the iPad portal idea–we’re looking into making LeapMotion controllable screens where students can interact with 3d scanned objects from the MARTA collection housed in the Anthropology Department. It’s a little rough at the moment–but through Unity I’ve built a test run that’s working pretty well. Two hands enter the screen to manipulate the object with realistic physics. We’re using a 1920s whiskey jug at the moment–luckily I can’t break it in the virtual world, because I’ve dropped it multiple times. Using the LeapMotion is a bit of a skill in itself–albeit fun to learn. Later this coming week I’ll give more detail and some screenshots of a more finalized version! -Robert

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“Education, Technology, and Society”

  October 26, 2014 , , , , ,

This week I sat in on the two presentations given by Rich Halverson on : Education, Technology, and Society Speaker Series Center for Instructional Innovation.   Much of his presentation was analyzing how technology does and can influence the way we educate and the way we learn.  Although some of the discussion was giving an overview of various approaches to education currently being used, what I found most interesting was his comment on the way kids and young adults communicate and interact with each other and the world. You no longer call you friend to make plans to meet, go to the public library to do research, or have to meet up in person to play a game- everything can be done remotely. You what information on a research topic for school, google it. You want to know where your friend is to see if they want to have lunch? Just see what they last tweeted or put on facebook, see if they have checked in somewhere or send a quick text.  Want to get with your friends and play the newest video game? Just get online and talk via your game console or computer.  Basic human interaction is not the same , yet the way we approach the classroom and education is shockingly stagnant. I believe in much of the traditional concepts utilized ino our public systems, but that is also in part because I do and have succeeded in them.  I am one of the few people I know … Continue reading

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“Tell me, won’t ya tell me, won’t ya tell me, won’t you tell me…”

  October 16, 2014 ,

While I have been working diligently on finishing the first safety video and planning out the next installments, I wanted to shift the focus to another interesting project I have been working on – the Tools Wiki.  The Tools Wiki is the brain child of Valerie and will be a clearing house of online resources with GSU examples for students to use and expand.  For example, for assignments that require students to build website, they could use the Tools Wiki to find what other students have used in the past and see examples of their works. We are now in the prototyping phase where Valerie, Wasfi, and I are all making our own versions to experiment with to see how people interact with it and use it.  You can view mine below: As always, I am open to any and all feedback, so if you check it out, tell me know what you like/dislike/expected/etc. Roxanne Greeson Below is a “new to me” band, the Mother Hips from California with their song “Third Floor Story”, I found it to be a great jam song with a catchy chorus and of course a couple of Ooo OoOoo’s thrown in for good measure.

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The Weeks Just Keep on Getting Busier!

  October 12, 2014 , , ,

Hey guys! This was another pretty productive week! Andrew and I ran two workshops in how to use Agisoft PhotoScan. The first workshop had no turnout unfortunately–but our second one this past Friday had a few very interested and excited people come along. I explained how the software worked and showed some examples of running through the workflow of building a 3D model based on a set of photographs. It’s a pretty awesome software package–but also needs some finesse i understanding the settings to get better results. These settings are key, because a single set of photographs has the potential to have great alignment–or not–all dependent on which settings one uses. I beseech someone to come out to the next set of workshops we hold this semester! We have the software installed on all out computers and that means we can start doing a lot of on-the-fly modeling in the workshops with various groups working at different workstations! Next week my goal is to finish figuring out how to create a 3 cube based on a list of points rather than just a 2D plane–I’ve tried and failed a few times already so I have to go back to reading up on the workflow surrounding the triangle stripping. I’ll be excited to share with you next week what I figure out! This will help get our buildings accurate in in the 3D reconstruction of Decatur St–because I can start inputting accurate measurements for buildings that don’t follow a strict right-angle … Continue reading

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Learning the basics of mapping and further updates

  October 12, 2014 , , ,

This week has been another one of those informational weeks. I was recently recruited to be a part of the Atlanta transit project. This project is geared towards focusing on Atlanta’s public transportation history, particularly MARTA’s planned transit lines as well as existing ones. With this being said our plans are to create one all inclusive map of how MARTA’s transit lines were originally planned to extend to and where they actually ended up being today. With Atlanta’s new street car being prepared for release in the next upcoming months, we can see how public transit has impacted life downtown and how public transportation remains as an important issue for large cities like Atlanta. When analyzing the “game plan” for the project I was taught how to search for archival maps of Atlanta’s MARTA plans through GSU’s libraries resources. With these maps we can therefore sift through all the maps and record all of our findings to avoid overlapping and duplicates.These maps are then used in a large and very resourceful software called Arcmaps where we can over lay these old transit plans over another realistic map that places it to be geographically accurate. All this information was very enlightening and interesting when learning how all the mapping processes work. This project is going to be an exciting and educational experience for myself who is a computer science major in order  to obtain some hands on experience with mapping. I am glad to be what you call a rookie introduced … Continue reading