Tech
October 5, 2012 the Winged Post
Stoodle: Interactive online classroom
Future of 3D Technology
apoorva rangan & anokhi saklecha
3NET
opinion editor & reporter
alyssa amick
SCREENSHOT
TalonWP online editor
NEW STYLE OF LEARNING AP Calculus BC teacher Bradley Stoll conducts his class through Stoodle, a recently developed online program. Stoodle was created by students Arjun Mehta, Divyahans Gupta, Simar Mangat, and Maverick McNealy over the summer.
According to Stoll, however, it needs some work to be practical enough for teaching a large class of students. To him, the site lacks the structure that he needs to teach new material. “I think the site has a lot of potential [but] will be more useful for tutoring sessions,” Stoll said. Stoodle first arose as the Interactive Student Network (Instunet), a concept formed by Arjun, the company’s founder. At last year’s Harker Research Symposium, Arjun approached keynote speaker Vinod Khosla with the idea for Instunet. Khosla referred the founders to his wife, Neeru Khosla, a primary founder of Stanford University’s CK-12 program. The group got
funding and office space in the CK-12 headquarters. The board of advisors includes Khosla, Ward Mailliard, an executive board member of the Mount Madonna School; and Karl Mehta, a White House Presidential Innovation Fellow, according to the website. “Right now, not all teachers are able to give students individual attention,” Simar said. “By using Stoodle, hopefully students will [ask] more questions, [start] more discussions [and] more conversations about the subject in class, while actually understanding the topic in question.” According to sophomore Helen Wu, who participated in Stoll’s inaugural Stoodle session, student users
Kindle Fire HD
Dangers of phone use while walking
Second-generation tablet will please users nikhil dilip
VIVEK BHARADWAJ - WINGED POST
EIT & tech editor
TEXTING Sophomore Dylan Patel glances at his phone while walking next to the basketball courts. While more people have opted to use their phones while walking in order to be more efficient, it has also led to several accidents.
vivek bharadwaj reporter Picture this: You just received a text from your best friend, “OMG, did you see The Big Bang Theory last night?” and since you are a big fan of the CBS comedy, you have to respond to that. On the other hand, class starts in two minutes, and you do not have time to stand there and text back. The seconds tick by. You want to reply, but you cannot risk another trip to the attendance office either. Faced with such a dilemma, many students do the obvious: use their phone and walk simultaneously. The sight of students strolling around engrossed in cell phones is a common one on the Upper School campus. However, phone use while walking has led to accidents both minor and serious. Last year, a report from the Consumer Product Safety Commission showed that 1,152 people in the United States were hospitalized for injuries resulting from using their phone or other devices while walking. “You’re basically walking around blind. You have no vision of what’s in front of you, just using your peripherals essentially,” Shelby Rorabaugh (12) said. Indeed, students have walked into metal poles, walls, trees, and people whilst staring at their phones. In a poll of 136 students, 40% responded that they had walked into objects or other people while distracted by their phones. “I think it’s really annoying, because a lot of people are on their phones and are not looking where they’re going,” Michaela Vachev (10) said. “It’s kind of dangerous because [...] people
were also intrigued by the new teaching methods. “I think [Stoodle] is pretty good because it is interactive,” Helen said. “[However], it can be a little busy, noisy, and disorganized.” Divyahans found a few minor glitches during a test run and hopes to fix them in the near future. Since the current version of the website requires Adobe’s Flash software in order to run, the team is working on developing another model of Stoodle to work on the iPad, which doesn’t support the software. According to Arjun, Stoodle will officially launch in a couple of months, in order to provide the best product to the public.
are going to bump into other people.” Such a hazard affects others besides the careless walker when in crowded hallways such as those in Main. Are there any advantages to using one’s phone while walking? To students like Michaela, the answer is no. However, other students find it useful to use their phone “on the fly.” Shelby adds that not standing still to use a phone is “[...] a little more efficient and takes less time,” allowing increased productivity. Other students use their phones for recreational purposes as they walk. “You can check your schedule, and you can play ‘Doodle Jump’ when you have a second,” Arjun Narayan (9) said. In addition, students use their phones to keep track of time between classes, ensuring that they do not arrive late, and to keep in contact with friends and parents. Phone use while walking is a form of multitasking, and similar incidents have caused student injuries before. Upper School Nurse Clare Elchert said she has seen students, distracted by books, hurt themselves by walking into lamp poles. She has not seen any injuries attributed to phone use while walking, but does not discredit its possibility either. Cell phones have become an important part of student life, providing modes of entertainment and communication. Using a phone on the walk to class to save time, however, may be a less than ideal solution.
Amazon’s Kindle Fire HD, announced last month, combines aesthetic appeal and efficient functionality to create a tablet that has the potential to make a dent in the small tablet market. The tablet is available in both seven and nine-inch versions. The former was released three weeks ago, and the latter tablet will be available for purchase in November. The device offers 16 gigabytes of storage for $199 and 32 gigabytes for $249. M a k ing its second foray into the tablet market by following up the Kindle Fire, Amazon will look to revolutionize the small tablet market. Though Amazon has dominated the e-reader market since the Amazon Kindle was released five years ago, its first tablet failed to make such a presence in its domain. According to technology website Engadget, Apple’s iPad continues to be the frontrunner among large tablets; similarly, Amazon looks to make its device the best one among small tablets. The iPad has a screen that is about ten inches long diagonally, while the Kindle Fire HD will have both seven and nine-inch screens. The Kindle Fire HD runs on Google’s Android 4.0 operating system, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich. Though Samsung’s Nexus 7, endorsed by Google, runs on the same operating system, Amazon adds a custom graphical user interface to the Kindle Fire HD’s operating system, which gives the user less freedom and makes the interface less smooth in comparison. Despite running Android’s operating system, the tablet does not allow users to purchase and download content from the Google Play store. Amazon promotes its own store on
this device, and users can purchase all the content available for users of Amazon’s eReader, the Kindle. The Google Play store offers more apps, movies, books, and songs than Amazon’s store, according to the statistics provided by each company’s website. Amazon’s significant content disparity relative to Google is an important factor to consider for users who enjoy listening to music, watch movies, read books, and browse applications on their tablets rather than simply using the device’s built-in applications. Users with Amazon Prime can “borrow” e-books from Amazon’s Lending Library and stream select television shows and movies without commercials. The device comes with a free month of Prime membership, after which users can continue being members for $79 a year. Having Amazon Prime is a notable advantage for the Kindle Fire HD, and membership is cheaper than that of Netflix or Hulu Plus, both of which also offer instant streaming of content in their respective libraries. The Kindle Fire HD sports stellar audio due to its two Dolby Digital speakers. On other tablets, music does not sound as authentic, but music on this device sounds like it is coming out of actual speakers. The tablet’s audio system is a significant plus for users who tend to listen to music often. According to Amazon, the device can last as long as 11 hours on a single charge, compared to the ten hours of the Nexus 7. Though an hour is not too much of a difference, the Kindle Fire HD runs more efficiently than its predecessor, taking up less energy for the same amount of time. Though the Kindle Fire HD is certainly a good product for its price range, competitors such as Google’s Nexus 7 offer more features on a sleeker interface and at the same cost as the Kindle Fire HD. AMAZON
To math teacher Bradley Stoll, it was a fairly typical AP Calculus BC lecture. A student was doing a problem on a whiteboard. Stoll was answering and asking questions, and required students to raise their hands before speaking. This review session, however, was far from normal. For one thing, it took place from 7 to 8 p.m. on a Thursday night. There was not a single student present in the classroom, and no teacher at a desk. The whiteboard did double duty as a computer screen. This past summer, juniors Arjun Mehta and Divyahans Gupta and seniors Simar Mangat and Maverick McNealy created and developed an educational aid called Stoodle.org. Through this website, students and instructors can discuss academic problems and concepts live through voice and text chat on a real-time online whiteboard. Stoll was helping the founders beta test their website to test its efficiency. Additionally, Stoodle is testing their product with Bay Area-based Nueva Middle School and Leadership Public School. Stoodle offers several tools, including instructional videos and online textbooks, so that “high school students [can] communicate more with their peers,” CEO and founder Arjun said. The site strives to recreate a traditional classroom experience. For example, students can turn on their microphones before asking a question and can press a “raise hand” button before answering. The site is currently in beta testing.
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After a long day of school and extracurricular activities, you come home and plop down on the couch, throw on your glasses, and turn on the TV. The screen comes to life, not in the typical two dimensions, but in the ever more prominent 3D. Within the next few years, 3D could be the new norm for watching movies, television, music videos, and video games. In Los Angeles from September 20 to 22, an annual event known as 3D Film Festival (3DFF) took place. The conference was held to recognize what fans believe is the future of television, movies, video games, and entertainment. In a press conference, journalism students learned about this new technology. Relatively new to the market is the LG 3D TV, the website of which boasts that it is “the next Generation 3D TV,” as it “brings the big-screen 3D experience from the cinema directly to your living room, so you can share the 3D fun with all your friends and family from the comfort of your sofa in stunning Full HD.” According to Tim Alessi, the Director of New Product Development for Home Electronics for LG Electronics, the greatest problem with 3D TV’s is currently the lack of content available for those who own 3D TV’s, which then reduces the amount of people who buy them. One of the greatest problems associated with 3D in general is the use of glasses. Although technology exists that would make the glasses unnecessary, it is not as advanced as the glasses. Many people, including Wendy Shwe (12), are not big fans of 3D because of the glasses. “I personally don’t really like 3D technology,” she said. “I think the glasses are clunky, [and] the visuals make me a little dizzy, and they aren’t clear sometimes.” Don Bland, Director of Development and Production at 3net, one of the few TV channels that broadcasts solely in 3D, believes that only people in the United States have a problem with the glasses. “The rest of the world has embraced [them],” he said. “Americans need to get over 3D glasses.” Because 3D is such a new technology, companies often face the problem of not having the correct software or tools to do what the technology requires. Randy Berg, Director of Strategic Planning at Deluxe Digital Studios, believes that 3D technology is “largely uncharted territory.” “You have to invent things yourself,” he said, adding that “you can’t wait for others to build the tools [you need].” In the future, directors and producers are looking towards making many more movies, videogames, and TV shows in 3D. Corey Turner, an executive stereographer at Paramount Pictures, discussed how prominent 3D will be in the future. He believes that soon, 3D will be the new normal for cinematic experience. This year alone, Paramount Pictures is looking into producing five to seven 3D movies, a huge increase compared to earlier years. Jeton Gutierrez-Bujari (10), however, believes that this might not necessarily be a good thing. “I think that right now [3D] is not ready for the commercial use,” he said. “What I think happened is after Avatar, which was extremely successful, came out, everyone followed suit, saying ‘if it’s 3D it’s going to be that much better,’ but I don’t find that true. Although some great movies are in 3D, 3D isn’t necessarily ready yet.” While the future of technology is never predictable, 3D technology developers believe that within the next couple of years, the market will “explode” and transform 3D into the new norm.