Monday, June 11, 2007
Weekly Reflection: The Importance of Labels
Earlier this week, while doing some reading for class, I thought to myself, who cares what the difference is between Constructivist and Constructionism theories of education? 'Tis far more important to simply engage in it in a real sort of way, than to banter about distinctions between the theory of it, and the application of it. But labels are indeed important, and in the info world, it's called tagging. Tags are just labels to make it easier to find data.
This week I had a look at another TED presentation, which shows an application prototype using Seadragon and Photosynth. Seadragon is a computing environment that lets you interact with a vast amount of visual data in a multi-resolution experience - An amazing tool to work with visual data, it allows for a multi-resolution experience (like zooming in and out effortlessly). Photosynth marries the capabilities of Seadragon and computer vision research by Noas Navely (sp?) In this extraordinary application, images gathered from multiple sources are arranged spatially and converted to panoramic views and much more.
Watching this demo, which used images gathered from http://www.flickr.com/, drove home an important point about the importance of metadata and tagging, or labelling data, that we publish to the web. It just makes it so much easier to share data if you make it searchable, and tagging is one way to assure that. He does talk about the tapping into the social web universe, using data from users worldwide, creating a "cross-user social experience". It creates hyperlinks between image collections from all users, linking to the information about each image, thereby making for a richer experience.So don't forget to tag those pictures you upload to flickr!
And just think about how you can use this technology in the classroom. Linking images and text, to make a visual potpourri of available resources, can provide a much richer database of related information, for any topic. In order for such a collaborative learning atmosphere to flourish, data of all kinds has to have an efficient way of being found. By tagging our posts, files, images, audio, etc., to the main idea, we are helping to build a world wide index that can add to the human experience and knowledge base.
Lynne M Bailey
teaching portfolio: http://www.lynnembailey.com/
studio portfolio: http://www.presentsbydesign.com/
http://www.funmasters.biz/
This week I had a look at another TED presentation, which shows an application prototype using Seadragon and Photosynth. Seadragon is a computing environment that lets you interact with a vast amount of visual data in a multi-resolution experience - An amazing tool to work with visual data, it allows for a multi-resolution experience (like zooming in and out effortlessly). Photosynth marries the capabilities of Seadragon and computer vision research by Noas Navely (sp?) In this extraordinary application, images gathered from multiple sources are arranged spatially and converted to panoramic views and much more.
"Using photos of oft-snapped subjects (like Notre Dame) scraped from around the Web, Photosynth creates breathtaking multidimensional spaces with zoom and navigation features that outstrip all expectation. Its architect, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, shows it off in this standing-ovation demo."
Watching this demo, which used images gathered from http://www.flickr.com/, drove home an important point about the importance of metadata and tagging, or labelling data, that we publish to the web. It just makes it so much easier to share data if you make it searchable, and tagging is one way to assure that. He does talk about the tapping into the social web universe, using data from users worldwide, creating a "cross-user social experience". It creates hyperlinks between image collections from all users, linking to the information about each image, thereby making for a richer experience.So don't forget to tag those pictures you upload to flickr!
And just think about how you can use this technology in the classroom. Linking images and text, to make a visual potpourri of available resources, can provide a much richer database of related information, for any topic. In order for such a collaborative learning atmosphere to flourish, data of all kinds has to have an efficient way of being found. By tagging our posts, files, images, audio, etc., to the main idea, we are helping to build a world wide index that can add to the human experience and knowledge base.
Lynne M Bailey
teaching portfolio: http://www.lynnembailey.com/
studio portfolio: http://www.presentsbydesign.com/
http://www.funmasters.biz/
Labels: importance of labels, metadata, photosynth, seadragon, tagging, tags, TED
