Very Cute! Department of Defense Acquisition Mini Learning Games

If you are the Department of Defense, how do you make sure your workers in the Acquisition Department engage in required learning activities?   


Games!  You can access the games via the Defense Acquisition University game portal. Below are some screenshots, descriptions, and links:


Procurement Fraud Indicators

"Investigate potential Procurement Fraud Indicators in this game which allows you to form hypotheses, test your theories, even question individuals who might have something to hide!" -CLC DAU

Homeward Bound

"Join Ratner's friends and help guide him back to the Pentagon; across rivers, highways, and highly guarded walls using your knowledge of Acquisition Strategy and Contract Execution." -CLC DAU


Acquisition Proposition

"How well do you know the Acquisition Lifecycle? Test your knowledge in this fast paced game!" -CLC DAU


About the Defense Acquisition University
"The Defense Acquisition University is the one institution that touches nearly every member of the Defense Acquisition Workforce throughout all career stages. The university provides a full range of basic, intermediate, and advanced certification training, assignment-specific training, applied research, and continuous learning opportunities. The university also fosters professional development through mission assistance, rapid-deployment training on emerging acquisition initiatives, online knowledge-sharing tools, and continuous learning modules." - DAU Website


RELATED
Listen to the DoD Roundtable:  Interview and discussion about the casual learning games, featuring Dr. Alicia Sanchez, Games Czar, Defense Acquisition University
DoD Roundtable Transcript (pdf)
Defense video games perfectly capture excitement of acquisition process
Stephen Losey, Fedline, 12/10/10
DoD launches its own causal games site
milgamer, 12/8/10

Quick Post: Journey, the next game from thatgamecompany (developers of Flower, flOw, and Cloud).

I've been following the work of some of the people behind thatgamecompany since they were graduate students at USC, working on Cloud, an enchanting and relaxing game. They went on to develop Flower and flOw, and are now working on Journey, the next game planned for release:





To view video trailers of other games by thatgamecompany, see the following post:


Games to Lift Stress Away: Flower, flOw (and Cloud), from thatgamecompany

Also visit thatgamecompany's website!

Gesture "multitouch" 12 x 7 interactive video wall provides tours of I/O Data Centers' facilities

I came across this demonstration of I/O DataCenter's 12 by 7 foot interactive video wall that makes playing around with views of data center modules...interesting! The display is a gesture-based "multi-touch" system. (I'll update this post when I get more information.)



Here is the description from the Datacenter YouTube channel:


"Instead of hauling a 40-foot long modular data center to a trade show, i/o Data Centers is taking a high-tech approach to customer tours of their i/o Anywhere modular data center. The i/o team has created a 12-foot by 7-foot touchscreen video wall to provide interactive tours of the company's facilities. Selecting a "hot spot" pops up a virtual data center, complete with cross sections and product info, following the concept of the touch screens in the sci-fi movie "Minority Report.""


FYI: I/O Data Centers has an application that runs on the Surface.

UPCOMING:
Stay tuned for my upcoming posts! 


News about LM3LABS (Previous post)
Interactive Surveillance CCeline Latulipe (technologist) Annabel Manning (artist)

Interactive Video

OpenKinect, NUI, NI

Games, serious games

3D, including glassless

Large interactive displays in public spaces

Convergence 2011
Telepresence Updates
RENCI, Charlotte Viz Lab

Interested in the OpenNI Initiative? OpenKinect? To learn more, read Josh Blake's Interview of Tamir Berliner of PrimeSense

Interview: Tamir Berliner of PrimeSense

Josh Blake, Deconstructing the NUI, 12/9/10

Josh Blake recently interviewed Tamir Berliner, one of the founders of PrimeSense.  If you haven't heard, Microsoft's Kinect was based on work by PrimeSense, and licensed their technology. PrimeSense provides consumer electronics with natural user interaction capabilities. The good news is that the company recently released open-sourced middleware for natural interaction and depth-camera drivers. It will be interesting to see how this will play in the near future!

In the interview, Tamir discussed a number of topics related to postWIMP technologies.  He also announced the newly created  OpenNI, "an industry-led, not-for-profit organization formed to certify compatibility and interoperability of Natural Interaction (NI) devices, applications, and middleware."   It is good to see this level of support for the cause!

Here is a quote from the interview that I especially liked:

"I believe that till today the devices we’ve been using, made us learn greatly lot about them before we could use them and gain their value. I’m pretty sure everyone who is reading this has got at least 3 remotes sitting on his living room table, and at least once a week needs to help someone use their computer/media center/phone/etc. It’s time for that to change and it’s up to us, the technologists to make this revolution happen, it’s time for the devices to take the step of understanding what we want and making sure we get that, even without asking if it’s a trivial task as opening a door when we approach, closing the lights when we leave the room, even making sure we have hot water to shower with when we return from work or wake up in the morning, depends on what we normally do." -Tamir


RELATED
Here are a couple of videos from the OpenNI website that demonstrate OpenNI-compliant applications:

OpenNI-compliant real time skelton tracking by PrimeSense


OpenNI-compliant real time SceneAnalyzer by PrimeSense

FYI: 

Josh Blake is the author of the Deconstructing the NUI blog. Over the past couple of years, he's explored natural user interfaces and interactions through his work on applications designed for Microsoft Surface and Win7 with Windows Presentation Foundation.

About a month ago, Josh organized OpenKinect, an on-line community to support collaboration among people interested in exploring ways to use Kinect with PCs and other devices.  An example of this effort is the open source code, libfreenect, which includes drivers and libraries for Windows, Linux, and OS X. 

The Natural User Interface Revolution
Josh Blake, 1/5/09


Kinect for Xbox 360: The inside story of Microsft's secret 'Project Natal'  (long, but worth reading) David Rowan, Wired UK, 10/29/10


People of libreenect

OpenNI User Guide (pdf)

Plug for Computer Science in Education Week: Informative series of short video clips, resources, and links to promote understanding of the importance of computer science and related fields

This week is Computer Education in Education Week, part of an effort of ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) and CSTA (Computer Science Teachers Association) to promote awareness of the importance of computer science education in K-12 education. CSTA developed a series of short videos to share with students as part of this effort. The videos highlight the multitude of ways that computer scientists impact our world. In my opinion, the videos would be appropriate for sharing with parents, teachers, school counselors, school administrators, and school board members.

Computer Science and Entertainment


Computer Science and the Environment


Computer Science and Communications


Computer Science and Medicine


Computer Science and Empowerment


To dig deeper into this topic, read Running On Empty: The Failure to Teach K-12 Computer Science in the Digital Age (pdf)

RELATED
CSEd: Computer Science in Education Week
Computing in the Core
Computer Science in Education Facebook Page
Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology
ACM/CSTA's Recommendations
A Model Curriculum for K-12 Computer Science (PDF)
Google: Exploring Computational Thinking
ACM Computing Careers Website

Cross-posted on the Tech Psych blog.

UPDATE: Demo 2 of the Kinect Theramin, Therenect, by Martin Kaltenbrunner

I recently posted about the Therenect, a gesture-controlled digital theremin created for Microsoft's Kinect, created by Martin Kaltenbrenner - Therenect: Theremin for the Kinect! (via Martin Kaltenbrenner)  It looks like Martin has been busy polishing up the application over the past few days, as you can see from the video below:

Therenect - Kinect Theremin - 2nd Demo from Martin Kaltenbrunner on Vimeo.

RELATED
Virtual Theremin Made with Kinect; Real Thereminists Will Make it Useful
Peter Kirn, Create Digital Music, 11/30/10

ICE PAD: Interactive Multitouch Ice Sculpture by Art Below Zero (video)

ICE PAD: Interactive Multitouch Ice Sculpture by Art Below Zero


Here is the information about the interactive sculpture from the Art Below Zero YouTube Channel:

"Created by David Sauer & Max Zuleta for the Lake Forest Tree Lighting Festival.This Ice Crystal Display was the 1st to be created in the USA, Transforming 300 pounds of ice into the equivalent of a giant Ipad touch screen. "People always want to touch our Ice Sculptures, This Interactive Display gave them the perfect reason to get their hands cold." said Max Zuleta owner of Art Below Zero. The public response was amazement and interest in the workings of the touch screen in ice. Our favorite guess was "It must work by sensing body heat!"..."

"...The system is known as Rear Diffused Illumination or Rear DI. It works because an Infrared light is shone from the opposite side of the ice wall through the ice. When an object such as a finger, hand, or mitten stops the infrared light it reflects the light back to a custom camera built by Peau Productions. The illuminated objects are then converted to points of interaction using an open source program Community Core Vision which outputs TUIO data streams to a Flash program for animation. We like the look and feel of the Fluid Solver flash application. The output from the computer is then projected into the ice and ice diffracts the light into something beautiful. By this method the user can manipulate a visible light screen via an invisible light that only the camera can see..."


Thanks to Nolan Ramseyer, of PeauProductions, for the link!
PeauProductions Blog: Multitouch and Technology


RELATED
Ubice = Multi-touch On Ice at the Nokia Research Center in Finland (Video + Pic via Albrecht Schmidt)
Art Below Zero