** GCATT Technology infrastructure **
A gentlemen from GCATT told us about Hitachi donating a 100 inch video wall
for the GCATT building during the Olympics. Many companies are eager to
donate equipment that can be showcased during the Olympics. The video wall
will be installed outside a 250 person auditorium. The auditorium will
have power and network connections for each seat. The Classroom 2000 group
is considering what kind of technology demonstartion can be made in such an
environment. We are considering approaching Motorola or IBM to donate
other equipment like wireless PDAs for this purpose. Motorola is currently
a official Olympic sponsor, so it may consider such a donation.
** Classroom Scenarios **
Gregory presented a few slides from one of his classroom lectures on
object-oriented concepts. Each person was handed a different paper
simulation of the slides (as if shown on a PDA or portable screen). After
the scenario, some general ideas were:
* Yousif found the space around his "postage-sized" slide too confusing.
Nick suggested adding fields to the interface designated for comments,
questions, or other data that could be searched or hyperlinked to other
slides.
*Scott admitted that he did indeed make many useful comments about the
lecture material on the whitespace, despite the small size of the slides.
Some others who used larger versions of the slides, felt that there was'nt
enough space for all annotations.
* Chris wanted to have separate class and user windows such that he could
view the actual slides in the class window and drag the appropriate slides
into his user window, thus constructing his own version of the lecture
(with annotations).
* There was an issue of "looking back vs. reading ahead" regarding the
slides. Most people agreed that they wanted to be able to look back at
previous slides, some felt that there was also a need to see ahead at other
concepts that would be covered. So any constraints may not be necessary.
Nick suggested a scroll bar to move through all slides, yet it was agreed
by all that the current slide being discussed by the lecturer must be
highlighted.
* Nick suggested a multi-view means of interaction with the slides, whereby
the student could view (and scroll) thumb-nails of the slides and make
annotations on the side with pointers to the images, or zoom-in to the
actual slide and make annotations or marks directly on the slide.
* An issue is whether a large screen is necessary (portable) or the small
screen of a PDA would suffice.
** Delivery Platform for Educational Media **
The group felt that a decision must be made rather soon, regarding the
appropriate equipment to be purchased for the Classroom project. The key
decision petains to the delivery platform that students will utilize in the
classroom to recieve lecture info. and make annotations. The following
options are being considered:
(I did'nt get a chance to copy down the information from the board, since I
had to leave for a class, please correct me if I am mistaken)
Portable PC-based solutions:
*IBM Thinkpad 360P - cost $3500 + $169 for Ethernet card. (Bulky and
overkill for our needs. Too flimsy for students to handle.)
*Zenith CruisePad - cost $1000. Apparently that gives us a portable screen
only, and not the PC. Ron Hutchinson is looking into this option and will
have more information next week.
*DTR-1 - cost $300- $700
I found another company Telxon in Texas that has developed a wireless
handheld device currently being used by Southwest airlines for baggage
check-in activities. The Telxon 1134 is a 486-based windows PDA with 20 MB
RAM HD and 8MB RAM. They boast a range of 2,000 feet. The PDA measures
8.4x5.4 inches and weighs 35.2 ounces. They utilize radio data
communication with a frequency range of 900 MHz. No cost info available.
I'll try to call this company for more info.
PDA-based solutions:
*Newton - cost $140 + $200 for memory = Total cost $340.
*Newton MessagePad 120 - cost $700
*Motorola Envoy - based on the Newton OS. cost unknown (<$700).
*Motorola Marco - based on the Magic Cap OS. cost unknown (<$700).
The Motorola devices provide wireless communication (which is an add-on we
must purchase for the Newtons), and we may be able to get Motorola to
donate them.
Chris sited that an advantage of the Magic Cap OS is that we could program
the 68000 processor using "C". Yet, Sue said that the Newton OS was easier
to program, and there are currently several undergrads working on Newton
applications. It was also discussed that text-only WWW browsers are now
available for the Newton, and could be utilized for our purpose, with text
substituted for images.
Another development on the Newton OS is the next revision being released in
fall called Dante. It claims to runs all Newton apps (written for it)
twice as fast and offers improved handwriting recognition. It also permits
the newton screen to be rotated, so it can be viewed in landscape mode.
UNIX-based solutions:
*X workstation - It may be easily available at no cost. Yet it is not a
portable device, and no annotation or pen-based software exists for this
platform.
After evaluation of the scenarios and consideration of cost vs.
effectiveness, we must make a decision to purchase/acquire upto 30 devices
for this project.
Next week the group would like everyone to make a 5 minute presentation of
their design of an interface (based on either a PDA or Notebook screen) for
the classroom scenario.
Nick
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Nitin 'Nick' Sawhney Information Design & Technology
nitin@cc.gatech.edu Georgia Institute of Technology
(404) 816-1925 Atlanta, GA
http://www.gatech.edu/lcc/idt/Students/Sawhney.html