3D @ Wallace State

Often, nascent 3D (or 4K for that matter) hardware and software manufacturers simply push their wares at the wrong conferences. Dedicated STEM conferences—or conferences with strong STEM tracks—make for more fertile ground for 3D or 4K sales in education. It makes sense. Here's something I learned from a recent STEM conference:

Dr. Suhana Chikatla, an instructional learning designer with the Advanced Visualization Center in the Department of e-Learning at Wallace State Community College (AL), offered a session on their ongoing development of interactive 3D models. Wallace State is developing rendered-3D content in collaboration with other institutions in Alabama. Like many colleges, they are using students or in-house designers to develop their models. You can explore their work here: http://elearning.wallacestate.edu/3d-interactive-learning-activities/

My iPhone Makes Me Sick

Apple’s new iPhone iOS7 is making people sick. All over the country, it’s turning stomachs to the dark side. It has to do with a parallax effect (see this example) now available on backgrounds and in some apps that have been updated to iOS7. My wife has a newer phone than I do, so I tested it out right after I heard about the problem. For me, it was barely noticeable. A non-issue, really. For my wife, it was the same. But for folks with vision issues, in can quickly unravel their world. In fact--it has become so uncomfortable—a few folks are running back to the Apple store or their service provider to turn the new phones in and reclaim their old phones.  There are less drastic measures that can be taken, of course.  Instead of returning the iPhone or resetting it to an older operating system, one can:

        Choose a non-dynamic ‘stills’ background: SettingsàWallpapers & Brightnessà Stills
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Turn off the effect: SettingsàGeneralàAccessibilityàReduce MotionàOn

But the increasing number of people getting sick when using the 3D-like parallax effect on the iPhone is not the real story here. The real story is about a lesson not yet learned. In fact, about two lessons not yet learned. I guess it’s time to re-learn them. We will focus on lesson #1 in next week's post.