Shrinking and Growing - What can Alice see?

In Alice in Wonderland, she grew larger and smaller at times.  What did she see when in these different dimensions? (Watch film below)
I still own an old NASA game on a floppy disk (unplayable), which had the players going to different dimensions!  I thought this would be a great theme for a game!  Imagine hiding treasures in the same room with your players, but they can't see them!  Math game: For instance, you could hide a treasure inside the period at the end of a sentence.  Normally unnoticed, if the player would have to solve which Power of Ten the treasure is on to even look there.

Based on the book Powers of Ten  ... 5-star Amazon.com reviews say, "In forty-two consecutive scenes, each at a different 'power of ten' level of magnification, readers are taken from the dimension of one billion light years to the realm of the atom. The text and other illustrations depict what we can perceive at each progressively smaller level of magnitude. " [Book by Morrison, Morisson, Eames and Eames]
"Back in 1968, designers Charles and Ray Eames made a 10-minute documentary film, titled Powers of Ten, showing what the universe looks like at different scales. Philip and Phylis Morrison were scientific advisors on the movie, which Philip narrated, and it was chosen in 1998 for preservation in the National Film Registry, which selects 'culturally, historically or aesthetically significant motion pictures' for preservation. The Morrisons' book translates the film onto paper.

Starting with a view of a billion light-years, the book (like the film) moves inward, with each page being at one-tenth the scale of the previous one. In 25 steps, you're looking at a picnic by the shores of Lake Michigan, then plunging into a human hand, down through the cells inside it, the DNA inside the cells, the atoms inside the DNA, and the subatomic particles inside the atom. By the time you've gone a total of 40 steps, you're in a world of quantum uncertainty.

There is no better guide to the relative sizes of things in the universe, and no better teacher about what exponential, scientific notation really means. --Mary Ellen Curtin

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Wikipedia link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Powers_of_Ten

Great Film!

Watch Powers of Ten (cached copy)

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.powersof10.com/film

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Watch Cosmic Zoom, 8-min. film by Eva Szasz, 1968 http://www.nfb.ca/film/cosmic_zoom

at National Film Board of Canada.

Hiding inside the "Scale of Universe" by Cary Huang

My son, Daniel, just sent me a link to this cartoonlink Travel through dimensions of the Universe. Travel at your own speed at http://scaleofuniverse.com/ or just watch this video:

Developed by Cary Huang at htwins

Create a math game: hide objects in different layers, based on real dimensions, as this video is.

Create a Gigapan Game

Here's a place to create Gigapan games.  

Create your own game for free, http://gigapan.org/cms/create-games 

Gigapans can zoom in to incredible levels while preserving fine resolution, by combining multiple photos taken with their small Gigapan robot and stitching them together!

For me, I would like to hide objects on different levels that can't be seen in the overall picture.  They call this an Easter Egg hunt.  Here's one example by Gordon Atwell: It should actually work if you click on it!!
To see it full page, go to http://gigapan.org/gigapans/3768. This would be the 3d simulation the student goes through after drawing a pathway on a 2-1/2 d map, like Google Earth.

Moving through space and beginning math

Zander watching a squirrel. A clear wall or plane - the glass window - divides the short distance between the cat  and the squirrel.

This visual-spatial game interface can be used to teach many things, but it was first of all designed to teach math. 

For instance, a beginning math student could be told to go ten feet straight ahead, then turn right and go 3 feet, in an L shape.  At the beginning, they are just learning shapes, lengths, and angles.  The answer to the problem is an L-shape or a final spot they land on.

If they solve the problem while on land or an online game, they will begin to think of math as related to everyday space, which it is!) and begin to associate math with navigating through space.   Spatial abilities and visualization skills and abilities are related to math and science success, so the more you can get people to think that way, the better. There's been a good bit of research about this.

Travel through an equation: RFID visually tracks where people go

Here's some OpenSource (freely developed and available)  RFID software  that shows where people go in a conference.
It seems like it could be used to create math solutions (dots or lines). As players solve the math puzzles, or follow street maps, their pathway should show up as a math solution.  For instance, you could have someone travel the beltway around a city to create a circle.

Here's the software used, OpenBeacon: http://www.openpcd.org/OpenBeacon_Active_RFID_Project

Jobs for Autism

Here's an interesting letter from the Chairman of Jobs for Autism, which has similar aims to those of Mary Hart's Computing Workshop (see earlier blog on this subject).
A letter from the Founder and Chairman of Jobs For Autism, Mr. Jeffrey Stein

In 1988, the film "Rainman," in which Dustin Hoffman played a socially impeded person who could memorize certain facts and numbers that enabled him to break the bank in Las Vegas, gave many people their first glimpse of a form of autism. That was the year that I learned of autism as we discovered that my son, then three years old, was exhibiting certain traits that are characteristic of autism.


While the Rainman stereotype exists, it's rare. Unfortunately most of those afflicted with autism will not be able to earn substantial sums of money by beating the casinos. Rather, most face a more mundane existence that often culminates in the odd part-time job or years spent hanging around perhaps having an interest in something so strong that it borders on an obsession.


If a non-autistic person was as singularly focused on something as many autistic people are, they could be successful economically in that pursuit. But because of the perceptions of society, this usually does not occur for those within the autistic spectrum.  Therefore, a large proportion of people with autism spend their time helping around the house or doing nothing. This is a huge waste to society as well a waste for the individual. Those with autism who do work, usually go into a job that involves a routine and little contact with the public. Jobs such as warehouse work, data entry, mailroom and gardening are typical.


According to Steve Broach, a policy manager with the National Autistic Society (NASA) only 12 per cent of those with Asperger’s  syndrome [a common form of autism where the afflicted person is high functioning] are in full-time employment, despite the vast majority wanting to work.


Having a son with autism, I know that many if not all autistic people have potential greater than that recognized by schools or health care providers. When my son was first diagnosed, we were told that he might never speak well enough to communicate, that reading was highly unlikely and that he might never be self-sufficient. Even at the age of three and one half years, he had a fanatical devotion to basketball. Although he could barely speak and most people except for me thought he did not comprehend much, he taught himself how to read the TV Guide at four and one half just so he would know when the Lakers were on television. Even today, if you ask him how much is 120-40, he will be stumped. However if you tell him the Lakers lead the Pistons 120-80, he will immediately tell you that the Lakers are up by 40.


Although some people born with autism go on to achieve great things, the majority of them are not given the opportunity to fulfill their potential. The purpose of this website is to assist those with autism in realizing their true potential and to provide employment opportunities in areas that have not usually been open to the disabled or handicapped. These areas include the entertainment industry, professional and amateur sports, and even the legal profession.


The goal of our organization, is to raise awareness of the talents and capabilities of those within the spectrum, as well as serving as a forum for the spread of ideas, from education to health and nutrition, including new insight, discoveries and positive information, all designed to help those within the autism spectrum and their families, to improve their quality of life.  We welcome your involvement and input.

-Jeffrey Stein

Description of Game - Architecture Layers

There are 4 layers to the set of educational games I've been trying to create, called FunFunctions:

1. 2d-3d visual/spatial math games

2. authoring interface that connects games to 3d landscapes.  The solutions only have to have (x, y, z) points or lines.  Then they can be shown in any landscape. Teachers can control it more.

3. the landscapes are shapes, "billboards" and buildings placed on a terrain. Architectual students could build them, such as by using Auto CAD.

4. cognitive tutor: All the games would be displayed on a pallette that only shows games that are

a.  appropriate to the player's math level, 

b. favorites: the player's choice of conquered modules , or 

c. teachers' guidance could add more.

To begin with,  I want to get a full game running. I've had little ones running about 1993 and 2002, but I need to do this again and am thinking of using the a mobile handheld, combined with Google Earth and GigaPan. (The handdrawn sketch from the last blog applies to this).

Volunteer Artists and Programmers are needed

1. Artists are needed to create:

• 2d - landscapes, signs, quiz pictures in 2d and 3d
• 3d - architecture, plants, objects
• video - of 3d walkthroughs
• interfaces - what the players use to control what's going on
• find landmarks and treasures, as goals; search gigapans for useful ones
• think of optical illusions or ways to hide objects to make it difficult for the player 

2. a project manager to integrate these all

3. programmers would fit this together in an automatic way, running an invisible "cognitive tutor" or "intelligent tutoring system" in the background that knows what to present to the player next  but allows teacher guidance and player preferences.

4. Problems need to be written out and organized ( by level and type) and matched up with math textbooks.

5. Other: scan photos, organize existing videos and problems, list them

6. Put lists into databases for programmer to use.

There are other things.

Mobile game sketch and long paper - my project

Click on game sketch to enlarge it. Summary is written below.

Game
1. Shown picture: "Where is this landmark?"
2. You have 3 ways to find the landmark:

• your memory of the city
• a math problem (adapted to your level)
• a street map (like Google maps or Mapquest)

3. Orientation and location: Given a starting place, and facing a certain direction.

4. Follow the pathway virtually within a 3D scene (Google Earth), a zooming panorama (GigaPan), a flat or topological map, or actually in the physical world.

5. The player draws in straight lines, step by step (node by node) until reaching the goal...using a cube interface.

6. Each new segment automatically begins at the point the last one stopped.

QR code
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code 

7. See if goal you reached is correct, by pointing your smartphone towards a QR code or RFID.  There will be a few fake ones to mislead you!
8. Picking landmarks: Don't make it easy. Even if someone knows the city. their memory won't be enough:

• optical illusions where a road disappears (what's behind the bend?)
• within a different era (bridges torn down)
• different size (tiny gargoyles)
• hidden views (behind trees, smoke, darkness....) that need tools to view them.
• unexpected scale or perspective
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This grew out of my 1993 Masters' thesis,
           http://slmasters.biz/Masters'%20Thesis,%201993%20(OCR).pdf

about a set of games, a cognitive tutor that connects them, and a 2d/3d interface for authoring, which I call Funfunctions.  It's about a 4 MB download.

Nearfield - Using iPhone and nearby objects to control media

This is a cute short video about using RFID in objects to control media shown by an iPhone.  For example, when it's near the Chuck Norris doll with orange hair, it shows a video about him. I'd like to use this to tell gameplayers when they've solved a location-based math problem.

from Nearfield.org http://www.nearfield.org/2009/04/iphone-rfid-nfc