3Book: A Scalable 3D Virtual Book

The use of technology can enhance the learning process, making topics easier to cover, reduce the time, and cost efficient. One of these technologies is 3Book: A Scalable 3D Virtual Book. The 3Book is a 3D interactive visualization of a codex book as a component for various digital library and sensemaking systems. It has the ability to represent books in 3D animated format and allows users to read large format books, and has features to enhance and support sensemaking operations by readers.
Previous book-like interfaces started with Catalogues, TabWorks, WebBook, and Early 3Book.
They developed a prototype 3D electronic codex book called the 3Book (see figure 1). The 3Book open to a double page of text as the reader turns a block of pages. The reader can turn individual pages by touching them or turn blocks of pages by touching the fore edge of the book. The ability of the 3Book to operate on a full book at interactive speeds depends heavily on the underlying engine.
British Library has developed a museum oriented electronic 3D books. The pages can be turned by finger (in the Library itself) or by mouse in a reduced-size Web version. But such system has some technological limitations.
Some technological forces may impede adoption this technology are the size of the book and memory consuming. For example, large book presents very strong challenges the reason behind they the true 3D books have generally been small. For example, the British Library Lindisfarne Gospels and others referenced earlier are also 3D books, but only about 40 of the pages are included—not entire books. The animation images are actually photographs of intermediate points during page turning. One version of the system consumes 304MB for only 20 book pages.
Check the link for more information: http://www.parc.com/publication/1374/3book.html



Figure 1. 3Book. (a) 3Book in closed position, (b) Turning a block of pages.

Cool Web 2 tools.

Hard to upload and share your photos with your friends, and/or family members? not problem you can use Troovi tool. Troovi is a very easy way to upload and exchange your photos in high quality format. You do not need to register your self with the Troovi website. Just choose the photos you want to share, and upload them, then the website will generate the link for you automatically when you successfully upload your photos and send then you can send the link to your friend(s). All these process will be done within ten minutes.

Features:

1. There is no need to register! You just choose the photos and upload them in high quality. Afterwards your collection is accessible by a unique url which is generated automatically.
2. To share these uploaded photos with friends, just send them your unique link. Also you can use the built-in share feature for email, facebook, del.icio.us and much more services.

http://www.troovi.com/

The 2009 Horizon Report – Cloud Computing

Specialized data centers that host thousands of servers — has created a surplus of computing resources that has come to be called the cloud. Cloud computing makes it possible for almost anyone to deploy tools that can scale on demand to serve as many users as desired (Horizon Report 2009).
The cloud is always invisible to the users, supports applications doesn’t matter, the applications are always available, and data storage is very cheap.
The emergence of cloud-based applications is causing a shift in the way we think about how we use software and store our files. For example, educational institutions started using the cloud advantage for their own benefit for example, made applications hosted on a dynamic platform.
There are so many educational application can be hosted on cloud such as photo and video editing or publish presentations and slide shows. Those applications provide students and teachers with free or low-cost alternatives to expensive, proprietary productivity tools.
Currently, there are many cloud-based applications for teaching and learning started to be emerged such as animated educational environments. With cloud computing, applications could be easily distributed across a wider set of devices with low cost of computing and support for group work at distance embedded in many cloud-based applications. That would provide great benefits for many students or learners.

According to recent reports Armbrust et al, and DeCusatis, the leading obstacles which hinder the widespread adoption of cloud computing include security, data transfer bottlenecks, unpredictable performance and energy consumption.

Please visit the Horizon Report 2010 wiki at http://horizon.wiki.nmc.org/for more information!

References

Armbrust et al. (2009) “Above the Clouds: A Berkeley View of Cloud Computing,” EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley, Tech. Rep. Retrived on July 27, 2010. Available: http://www.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2009/EECS-2009-28.html

DeCusatis C. (2009). “Converged networking for next generation enterprise data centers”, Proc. National Science Foundation conference for the Enterprise Computing Community (ECC), Marist College, Poughkeepsie, NY.

Ted Talk - David Merrill demos Siftables

David Merrill demos Siftables.


We must keep up with technology, sharing information with the students in form that captures their attention while meeting the needs of the curriculum and beyond.




These are the toys of the future, small tiny computers that have the ability to interact with each other to make networks that represent words, art, math, and music.


Two points from the video that our Think Tank should study during our innovation strategy sessions:


Is this the future thing in hands-on learning?


Is it important to make learning on hands, authentic, interesting and enjoyable experience by using new technologies like this smart computerized toys (Siftables)?

Welcome to Classroom of the future Blog

Everybody welcome here.

This blog was created as one of CS855 - Futuring and Innovation(Summer 2010) course requirement.

CS855- is very excited class. Now I posted outside the box of the Moodle. I like to learn using new tools. I’m very glad to be in this class. I think there will be much more to learn.

You comments are so important to me.

Thanks alot