5 Uses of Xbox Kinect in Education.

• Establishing interaction
• Meet students from other schools, but instead of just talking, shake their hand.
  • Similar to Second Life, but instead of a mouse and keyboard, you’re using your hands and feet to interact.
  • Make students do a jig to retrieve resources.
  • Practice proper footwork for the upcoming dance while watching how others are dancing.
  • Pick up items and explore its features

• Storage and retrieval of classroom media
  • Find your teacher’s virtual classroom, go to their virtual file cabinet, and pull out the latest homework.  
  • Yes, we can already achieve this by accessing teacher web pages and finding course content, but augmented reality approach is much more engaging, and we all know engagement leads to increased learning.
• Logging access & record keeping
  • Instead of depending on student reliability to tell us if they studied for a test, we can access the log history to see who logged in and when.
• Enhancement of real-world environment
  • Forget about brick-and-mortar schools.  Build your school in the jungle or rainforest.
• Student Familiarity and Ownership
  • This is a technology many of our students are familiar with.  In fact, I would venture to say that many of our struggling students spend a lot of time gaming.  This outlet might breed confidence because of the familiarity they have with the technology.

Six Possible Business Uses for Xbox Kinect.

PowerPoint presentations with more oomph. What would make PowerPoint slides more interesting? How about a “wax on, wax off” Karate Kid (the first one) hand wave? Just imagine the fun gesture things you could do to move along a slide show. If you were buff, say like a gymnast, you could do all sorts of interesting things to move a presentation along. Of course, your antics may distract from your beautiful slides, but most of us wouldn’t pay attention anyway.

Teleconferencing. More intuitive video conferencing — telepresence anyone? Microsoft said Video Kinect will be more intuitive and track your movements and adjust automatically. In other words you can walk around without leaving the camera. You can seem Microsoft building this feature into Office at some point.

Vertical industry uses. In the healthcare industry, you can envision a doctor gesturing to go through a series of X-rays. You could also do this approach with touch, but Kinect for business could eliminate the need to carry a tablet around.

Employee training. In a factory — or any other environment where change management is critical — you can envision Kinect being used for simulations of specific tasks in a nuclear reactor, assembly line or anyplace else.

Modeling in creative industries. An architect could use Kinect to spin virtual models and manipulate them with his hands.

Better security. Xbox Kinect is supposed to recognize you and your gestures. Apply this technology to your laptop or PC and the security implications become clear. Kinect could eliminate passwords. One downside: You could get a black eye and break an arm playing rugby and your PC may not know you since a) your face will be a mess and b) you’ll be left to gesture with one arm.

Xbox Kinect in the hospital operating room

Stop Motion Photoshoot Contact Sheet.

This is the contact sheet for the shoot and all of the images can be found on here.

Evaluation of the Stop Motion Photoshoot.

     I think that the photoshoot went really well as our group worked really well together and someone took charge to help organize where everyone was and who was doing what so as we didn't get confused or move something that we weren't meant to. I also think that although our idea was fairly simple, it was executed very well by all of the group and the outcome looked very good. I also like the set that we created out of material and stones as it added character to out idea and looked good on the photos.
     I think that we could have come up with a more complex idea had we have had more time like the other group did however our idea was simple and rushed as we weren't sure of what to do. I also think that we should have tried harder to keep out of the shots as in some of the images you can see some of us as well as getting in the way of the flash which resulted in some of the images coming out darker than others.
     If we were to do this again, I think we would come up with a more complex idea and execute it better by keeping people out of the way when the shots were taken. I think we would also use different materials on the set so as to make it look more realistic and have less of a cartoon feel to it. We would keep the same person to lead us though as they knew what to do and did that very well by telling us what to do and helping us throughout the shoot.

Studio Equipment List.

Canon EOS 5D.

Canon 24-105mm Zoom Lens.

Cambo Camera Stand.

Soft Box Wafers / Strip Light Wafters.

Sync Lead.

Bowens Pulsar Radio Triggers.

Bowens 500W Lighting.

Final Group Stop Motion.

This is the final Stop Motion movie that was exported from Final Cut Pro and converted through QuickTime so as to change it to MPEG-4 format that would play on most computer programmes.