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LWF11 Prof Andrew Blake – MD: Microsoft Research Cambridge – NUI

Talk about NUI - Natural User Interfaces (no touch).

Obvious plug for Kinect.  Showed Anybot robot that allows you to attend a meeting without actually being there. Talked through other examples of such tech.

Challenges of creating Kinect: Have to be able to capture body pose.  Come in many shapes, sizes and flexibilities! Depth camera made all this possible.  Prof Blake spent quite some time doing the Professor thing by going into the science of Kinect.

Similar tech that developed from Autism work is now allowing computers to detect emotion in faces.

Big final plug for Computer Science.  Is changing the World.  Seriously concerned about the decline in uptake in schools.  NOT the same as ICT.  Computer Science is about providing the computing and is an exciting intellectual challenge.

Final point is salient from this morning’s last few talks and a good call to arms on what was otherwise a bit too geeky a presentation for my liking!

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PC Software Image

Below is a guide for staff to support our new standard software image at school.  I’ve added a lot of free software, thought the whole list might be of interest to some.
What software do you have on your school image?
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Kodu Game Lab – 3D Games Design for School

kodu-game-logo

Kodu is a new game programming language / tool from Microsoft.  It has had a very low-key launch, I came across it as it was featured in the excellent Edge Magazine last month.  Kodu is initially available to the public on X-Box Live Marketplace for about £3.50.  I have been fortunate enough to be allowed on to the Beta of the PC version, this is currently only open to educators.  You can apply to join the Beta by following the link from this MSDN blog.  Watch this video from Microsoft, it gives you a quick feel of how the program works:

Kodu demonstration for schools
Kodu demonstration for schools

I have spent the whole morning working through the tutorials and examples getting a feel for what is possible and I have to say I am impressed by the scope of the package.  I’m also a little bit overwhelmed.  So I decided to try and build the bare bones of a game from scratch.  I chose a tower defence style game as the mechanics of it are simple enough.  What follows is a quick run through of my progress so far, I hope it serves as a good enough introduction of Kodu.

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