EdTech provides consulting, training, outreach and educational services
for faculty, instructors and staff using educational technologies.
EdTech provides consulting, training, outreach and educational services
for faculty, instructors and staff using educational technologies.
PicLens (initially reviewed in the December 2006 Trends in EdTech) now works on Windows as well as Macintosh and supports Firefox (and Flock) and Internet Explorer (it works on Safari on the Mac still too, but the feature set is lagging behind the other browsers now). Fire up Firefox or Flock (or Internet Explorer if you absolutely must), go to www.piclens.com, hit the download button and install (it's free). Restart your browser and what do you get? A whole new dynamic full-screen way to appreciate web-basedmultimedia!
The PicLens full screen "3D Wall"
With PicLens you can browse a Flickr photo pool, Facebook media gallery, Picasa web album, results of a Google image search or any of several other photo sharing sites or even YouTube videos, click the small arrow that appears on any image when you mouse over it and launch a full screen "3D Wall" of all the images on that page. Navigation of the images displayed can be done via the arrow keys or the mouse and clicking on any image enlarges it and centers it on the screen (in the case of YouTube videos, the video begins playing at this point). Double-clicking the image or video brings it full-screen and you can click (or use arrow keys) tomove through full screen displays of each image. For every enlarged image (whether partial or full screen) information is displayed, including a link to the image's original web page. In addition, in the top right of the screen you can instigate a search in one of six different image hosting sites or YouTube. If you have an image intensive site of your own, the PicLens site also includes instructions for enabling PicLens browsing of your own website orWordpress blog. This takes web-based image and YouTube browsing to a whole new level of experience. You gotta try it!
- Doug Mills
Original drawing from Daniel H. Burnham and Edward H. Bennett's Plan of Chicago.
At Lake Forest College, a group of academics, students, and technologists have inaugurated the Virtual Burnham Initiative to recreate and rebuild a past (and sometimes alternative) vision of Chicago. Using the century old Plan of Chicago, a landmark urban planning scheme by Daniel H. Burnham and Edward H. Bennett, initiative members are developing 3-D models, rich, multifaceted maps, and other virtual renderings of the original plan. Through these digital recreations, the initiative hopes to engender discussion and debate about land-use, planning and history both in and outside the academy.
Google SketchUp rendering of original Plan of Chicago building.
To help foster this discussion and grow the development of the model beyond the walls of Lake Forest, the initiative is using common, free (or very low cost), sharable, and massively multi-user software. For example, the 3-D models of buildings and streeetscapes are being developed using Google’s SketchUp software —an easy to use 3-D modeling program that is free for educational users. In addition, maps and other digital renderings are being created as overlays for the popular Google Earth software. Most ambitious of all, the initiative plans to develop a fully realized 3-D environment in the virtual world Second Life where users from the world over could congregate, discuss and experience a hundred year-old vision of the Windy City. By using these freely and easily accessible applications, students, academics, and others who have an interest in the historical development of Chicago can easily join in the development and creation of new models, maps, and other digital artifacts to add to the project. Indeed, the initiative already has active participants from outside Lake Forest including high school teachers and students, community college faculty, and University researchers from a number of disciplines and locales.
Google SketchUp rendering of original Plan of Chicago bridge.
For more information about the initiative, see the Lake Forest College website or read this summary of the initiative from the Midwest Educause conference.
- Al Weiss
An October 26th, 1935 advertisement in the Daily Illini whose argument still rings true.Anyone living in Champaign/Urbana or attending or working at the University of Illinois will find it both interesting and revealing to search through the Illinois Digital Newspaper Collection, which includes a growing selection of electronic scans of the campus Daily Illini (1916 to 1936) and the Urbana Daily Courier (1916 to 1925). The IDNC is maintained by the History, Philosophy and Newspaper Library at Illinois, and the project is actively scanning and adding additional years to its newspaper database. The search feature at the IDNC web site works very easily and once an article is found, it can be printed, emailed, saved as PDF or in a temporary collection. One can search by date or key word; since I have an interest in bicycles I simply typed in "bike" and found articles, advertisements and images from the 1920s, which were very interesting, even surprising. Some things never change, so it was interesting to read about unclaimed stolen bikes during the 1920s, and the local authorities ticketing cyclists who were riding at night without lights, headline reading: "Urbana Cops Start War on Lightless Bikes; Arrest Four" (March 7, 1923). Times have changed a bit however, as bike races were quite popular in the 1920s, even locally, with articles of local races, as well as over a decade of coverage of a six-day, international team cycling race held in Chicago. The IDNC interface is so easy to use it would make a great tool for student research projects. I plan to use it this fall in my own Film and New Media class as I found some great local history regarding cinema in our sleepy college town. Did you know, for instance, that a campus professor developed one of the early talkie film systems? Or that Urbana theater owners fought for many years to legalize Sunday movie screenings? Or that the Marx Brothers visited town? No matter what your interests or what classes you may teach on campus, the IDNC should hold discipline-related local historical information (and surprises!) worth exploring for you and your students. Hmmm . . . what if I type in "Tesla"?
The user interface for the Illinois Digital Newspaper Collection, showing a highlighted section in the context of the original issue layout. One can also open stories and newspaper segments as stand-alone electronic documents. http://icon.crl.edu/digitization.htm#US
- Robert Baird
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