Reaction-Reflection2

Web 2.0 Tools

Article Review Dan Parkison October 20, 2010 Call # EDUC699

**Bibliography article cited** : Johnny Lee demos Wii Remote | video on TED.com viewed 10/13/10, @http://www.ted.com/talks/johnny_lee_demos_wii_remote_hacks.html

media type="custom" key="7255841" align="center"

Summary of the Article: 

As researchers, something that we often do is use immense resources to achieve certain capabilities, or achieve certain goals. And this is essential to the progress of science, or exploration of what is possible. But it sort of creates this unfortunate situation where a tiny, tiny fraction of the world can actually participate in this exploration or can benefit from that technology. And something that motivates me, and what gets me really excited about my research is when I see simple opportunities to drastically change that distribution, and make the technology accessible to a much wider percentage of the population.

Now, for those of you who aren't familiar with this device, it's a 40 dollar video game controller. So here I have my computer setup with the projector, and I have a Wii remote sitting on top of it. Now, this requires another piece of hardware, which is this infrared pen. It's essentially got a battery, a button and an infrared LED, and it turns on -- you guys can't see it -- but it turns on whenever I push the button. Now, what this means is that if I run this piece of software, the camera sees the infrared dot, and I can register the location of the camera pixels to the projector pixels. And now this is like a whiteboard surface.So for about 50 dollars of hardware, you can have your own whiteboard.

I want to quickly say that although it does do it for 50 dollars, For the second demo, I have this Wii remote that's actually next to the TV. So it's pointing away from the display, rather than pointing at the display. So I'm looking forward to seeing some games, and actually Louis Castle, that's him down there, last week announced that Electronic Arts, one of the largest game publishers, is releasing a game in May that has a little Easter egg feature for supporting this type of head tracking.

But actually, to me, what's almost more interesting than either of these two products, is how people actually found out about them. YouTube has really changed the way, or changed the speed, in which a single individual can actually spread an idea around the world. You know, I'm doing some research in my lab with a video camera, and within the first week, a million people had seen this work, and literally within days, engineers, teachers and students from around the world, were already posting their own YouTube videos of them using my system or derivatives of this work. So I hope to see more of that in the future, and hope online video distribution to be embraced by the research community.

**Reaction/Reflection of the Article:** I was fascinated by this article for two reasons. First, I think it is vitally important to get technology into the hands of kids. While I am a proponent to the idea of, "Putting your money where your mouth is", I am also realistic with today's economy and the cash-strapped environment of our schools. So, if I have to tweek something to get kids to have somewhat of an experience of Web 2.0 tools, that is OK. Second, I am a tinkerer at heart. If I can justify buying a power tool for the good of the cause, I am all for that. I did a little more looking around at what else can be controlled with the Wii remote, and came across a great site with many more ways to use the bluetooth features of the remote. @http://hacknmod.com/hack/top-30-wiimote-hacks-of-the-web/ This site lists 30 ideas for incorporating the use of the Wii remote. While they are not all education related, I like the idea that it could stimulate conversation among students about what else it could be used for.