To support our work in Literacy I have created a simple set of images and video in the SMART Table Media application. This a basic lightbox app that is often demonstrated on multi-touch products. Although it does a basic job, the job this application does is always incredible to watch. Images can be freely moved, rotated and resized. Video has the same function and the twists, turns and magnification that goes on can be done as the video is playing without any interruption.
These are some short films I took today of four children working with this application. The images and video are from the Victorian period, primary and secondary sources of information. I asked them to explore the collection and make some notes about what they find out from the media. As a final discussion point they sorted the images and video into primary and secondary sources; real photos and video or not.
Media App, Manipulating Images and Video on the SMART Table (1) from Tom Barrett on Vimeo.
Media App, Manipulating Images and Video on the SMART Table (2) from Tom Barrett on Vimeo.
Media App, Manipulating Images and Video on the SMART Table (3) from Tom Barrett on Vimeo.
Media App, Manipulating Images and Video on the SMART Table (4) from Tom Barrett on Vimeo.
Media App, Manipulating Images and Video on the SMART Table (5) from Tom Barrett on Vimeo.
This activity ran for about 20 minutes and is the sort of depth that I have been looking for. I combined some pencil and paper note taking with the high tech access to the media, which worked for us. The children had room to work around the table and as I have said it is comfortable with four users.
Although there are many other applications to explore with multi-touch the Media application has my attention at the moment due the unique interaction with images and film that you experience when at the table. It is the blurring of that physical and digital space that I am intrigued with. The children passed each other video footage. If there is a way this can be done in other available computing environments then I don’t know about it. We certainly would not get the same level of intuitive connection with lots of media as you can when working in multi-touch.
It feels like this is an extremely unique and powerful feature of the multi-touch lightbox applications, whether on a SMART Table or not. One feature that provides children with amazing access to work with digital video in a unique way. The process just facilitates the learning intentions as it is so simple, hopefully you can see that from the footage. Film clips can be placed alongside each for comparisons; moved and sorted according to a custom background or even moved into a shared storyboard format. Furthermore a collection of images and video could be used in early years classrooms as a precursor to writing about an event or trip that took place.
It is the heightened sense of access and of sharing the digital imagery, combined with the fluid resize, rotate and placement controls you have that makes it a powerful learning tool.