CollabrATEC

By Heather Green for BusinessWeek Oct. 27, 2008
It’s a given that young people live in a high-tech world. For details, take a gander at some of the data compiled by Peter Schilling, who heads the IT department at Amherst College in Massachusetts. His IT Index, as he dubs it, shows, for example, that just 5 of 1,680 students—0.3% of the school’s enrollment—have landline phones, compared with 82% of Americans. The data also capture emerging tech preferences. Freshmen (average family income: $76,183) make … Continue Reading

A University of Tokyo initiative has built a device to create haptic sound holograms, otherwise known as “Lickable Holograms”. These holograms can’t be seen or heard, but can be felt, creating an entirely new way to provide feedback to interface users. the International Society for Haptics features more of Takayuki Iwamoto’s work on this new method for for producing tactile sensations with acoustic radiation pressure.

Obscura Digital, the bright minds behind Google’s 360 degree video domes, have debuted a multi-touch hologram system that can be used by multiple people at the same time.

You can learn more about what Obscura Digital is doing right now on their out-of-the-lab blog.

Children in the UK using an interactive learning tool.

The Technology Enhanced Learning (TEL) research group at Durham University has created SynergyNet. The researchers from the departments of Computer Science, Education and Psychology have focused on motivational techniques involved in teaching and learning to create a network that will allow schools in the UK to use multi-touch interactive desks in the next ten years according to The Register. These desks use a multitude of technologies including the … Continue Reading

Seattle Pacific University is using Adobe Acrobat Connect Pro to relaize real-time communication and collaboration in their engineering program.

edna Groups is a fully-featured collaborative toolset based on open source Moodle system software. Moodle allows educators to customize their online collaborative space with hundreds of modules.

Keith Harrison-Broninski’s lecture, A Software Framework for Human Interactions, at Javapolis concentrates on agile software design. This lecture focuses on human interaction management and how a software framework can assist in creating new tools for these interactions. This includes screen shots of humanedj a set of eclipse plug-ins for collaboration.

Parleys.com

The Parleys.com site, where this lecture is hosted, is an excellent example of online collaboration and learning. This site utilizes the latest technology, including Adobe Air, to display lectures and slides at the same … Continue Reading

BumpTop is a three dimensional interface that seeks to use the paradigm of a real world office to manage your file system. Using a propriety physics engine BumpTop mimics objects in the real world and uses self revealing gestures to interact with these objects.
This video demonstrates it’s intuitive interface.

Watch this video for a less dry and more realistic use of this technology

Conversely, some don’t feel this a real world, intuitive interface

Each group brought a prototype to share with the class as represented below:

Archivist:
A blog site has been built - www.collabratec.com
You will find a tag for each group respresented in the class.
Scott will be emailing Christopher individual emails in order to set each individual up with an account. The password to register is “atec”. Please change your password upon setting up your account.

Also submitted is a white paper outline for the final presentation. We are asking for input and ideas to fine tune the project. Input from each group will be imperative … Continue Reading

The THUNDER Pro is a white board collaboration system.

You can learn more about this product and others at www.polyvision.com

You can read the Product Brochure (Warning PDF) for the THUNDER.

You can see a video demo (Warning Very Large) for the THINDER.

You can buy this product and may others from http://www.touchboards.com/polyvision/polyvision.html.

The Touchlib development library is a creative tool for multi-touch interaction surfaces.

Jeff Han of Perceptive Pixel demonstrates how their multi touch interface is capable of collaboration.

<p>Natural User Interface or NUI Group is an interactive media group researching and creating open source machine sensing techniques to benefit artistic and educational applications.</p>
<a href=”http://www.nuigroup.com/”>NUI Group</a>