MYP - present your school on the schools website

3D Walk Through?

Here is one of those typical questions that land on the desk of the ICT-do-it-all-guy. We want to have a virtual tour through the school building on our website, can we have it? Or, a clickable map, with 360 degree photos. Or  . . .  And, can we have that by tomorrow?

Sure.

Check out

http://www.blendernation.com/2010/06/07/realworks-studios-walk-through-video/

All made with Blender, open-source. A team of 6 people, working 2 months or so . . .

There must be easier ways to accomplish the task . . . . 

A nice example, using a map, pop-up windows and 360degree photos can be seen here at the Int. School of Paris  http://www.asparis.org/page.cfm?p=1500
or here at a school in Singapore http://www.ais.com.sg/OurSchool/Facilities.aspx

So, how did they create those 360 degree ones? Without stitching 20+ photos together, of course, all in one shot.

You would need some very special hardware, obvious. http://www.cis.upenn.edu/%7Ekostas/omni.html shows what's out there, looks like a gadget shop on Mars.

http://gardengnomesoftware.com/pano2vr_download.php is software (not free) that allows to create the famous QuickTime Virtual Reality pictures. All you need to do before, is stitch your photos together.

Could we use Google Sketch maybe?

It's possible to apply textures to the outside of a building, using real photographs, so yes, why not trying the same for the building inside.

So what's the plan? I have turned this into a Grade9 MYP service learning exercise. (Smart, right!)
One student is trying the Google Sketch route, having lots of Google Sketch experience.

Some other students have started to use Prezi. They shoot photos, and decide themselves how to present. One student discovered that Prezi allows to 'stitch' photos together, just by placing them on the right spot in a sequence. Wow, it is all promising. When ready, I will post the link here . . . .

UPDATE:
here is the link:   http://www.ise.edu.ee/taketour.html
You can see 4 virtual tours of the school, they take a little time to load, but then come out really well (and in great detail). Next time, students should resize the images a bit smaller, so the view will be faster.
This was an excellent in-service learning project at our school!

all about me

Teaching and Integrating technology International Schools
Mac specialist,  Apple Distinguished Educator
Moodle specialist, MCCC
IPC, PYP, MYP, DP, IGCSE
male, 2 kids, in Korea
Skype:  marcel_id

PYP reception class - Keynote as drawing software

Reception kids like to come the computer lab. Enthusiasm all over. My main problem is the fact that the kids cannot read (or write) yet.
There you go with menus and file names etc. Using Keynote quite a bit with older kids, I was thinking about using some of the nice
elements of the program with my students. They tackled the PYP unit "Home" and I had the kids made a simple house with the shapes
available. Then I introduced colors, fills, and borders. Worked so well! They never knew they were working on a slide.

PYP - Unit 'What's out there" (Space)

My Grade2 PYP class studied the POI unit Space. Hurrah, finally a good chance to use some of the best Open Source software out there. We used Google Earth, with the layers for Mars/Moon etc, and explored the tours that are available. Got them hooked there!
Next we tried Celestia, a 3D space simulation program (see some featured screenshots here)
and Stellarium (planetarium) - explore it all here, both excellent programs to visualize the objects that kids talk about.
To finish it all off, students had to become creative, and create an iPhoto slideshow, with all planets from our sun. They also had to create "Space music/sounds", using Garageband, and import that as background music into their slideshow.

You can imagine; we all had great fun (and I am soo lucky to have headsets for all the iMacs in my lab :-)

Issuu - a nice way to publish a PDF/Book/PPT, you name it

ISSUU
Way cool. Forget about copying newsletters for kids or parents. The next book report will be digital!
There are numerous ways of publishing content on the internet (WEB2.0 we are talking!).

Issuu stands out, if you basically want to publish a document, created with a program on your computer. Powerpoint, Keynote, anything. It will be published as a book, has pages, zoom, and you can flip through. Just brilliant! So, just tried it out, and made a pdf book (from a Keynote presentation), with just some random ideas about how students could discuss and maybe test "MultiTasking", something everybody seems to be able to. Must admit, I struggle there. (Or is blogging, listening to Radio6 on iTunes, keeping an eye on 2 students in the Lab, and using Skype multitasking at it's best?)

Open publication - Free publishing - More multi tasking

Dictionary help in OSX

Did you know?

Students  often ask me (especially when they visit as guest in my Techlab, and I am busy trying to do something for myself) for the meaning or spelling of a word, or need help understanding a word or phrase.

As long as you are using a native Mac application (such as Pages, Safari), you can press <ctrl> <cmd><d>  and of you go; you get this wonderful little pop-up window that explains a lot. Keep moving your mouse (while holding the keys), and you get to see the neighboring words as well.

You can also click <More> and open the full Dictionary Window, showing more options.