Test photos for a 3D experiment

Here are some photos near the Exeter Quay. Maybe there could be a 3D model from this. I don't think I got far enough away from some angles, did not want to fall in the water. Please suggest links to other ones, maybe it needs a good zoom lens. Also the design may be too complicated. Something simpler could be worked out. It just needs a focus for a walk, real or imagined.​

Forgot the link for  Bristol as playable city in previous post. It is here . Aim for the year is to move the Colston Hall to Exeter Bus Station or at least a scale model.​

3D some sources

I have been sent a couple of links by Fabian King. He has guested on the Wild Show and has explained a lot about 3D scanning, an important topic for 3D printing. I had thought that scanning buildings in 3D would be very expensive. But he points out that there is software to make a model from photos.  123Catch has several examples such as the Flat Iron building. I have not yet worked out how to do this but have taken a photo of their model so could mix this into 2D images.

Also Google Maps now has a 3D aspect that you can choose as an extension of street view. This again is helpful for images that could be put together.​ I don't think there is much on Exeter yet but it could turn up later.

Any City , more images

Now that the Posterous blog is on this site you can find some previous attempts at collage of images. I am trying to find ways of relating to the dislocation I sometimes find online. On the Wild Show we have twice talked to Volkhardt Muller. I think the show at the RAMM last year was more like "any city" than "any high street" . I did take some photos in Taunton when the show went there. The website for This City's Centre has got a space for window views from other cities. I have sent in some from Twinity and some are now on the site. See screenshot below.

The other one is a start on "playful Bristol". I did try to apply for the £30,000 but only claimed to be doing some 2D collage. Most of the budget was for scanning buildings. It may turn out that rough results are possible on very low budgets. The aim is to explore why a particular space has a definition when online mix is also there. ​ This one has my own arch from Taunton and then Bristol Castle Park by Heather on her Travels, Creative Commons on Flickr. Maybe more later.

OMG mooc is scary

The main story this summer , in the UK and other places, is what to make of the mooc. (What Jeff Jarvis makes of the Guardian is actually a sideshow)  The universities still have an influence on theory around learning.​

Today in the print Guardian James Vernon  writes -​

Last December, the commercial launch of the Open University's mooc platform, FutureLearn, attracted the participation of a dozen universities and the support of David Willetts, but little response from Britain's beleaguered academics.

This seems fair enough. Based partly on reading the Guardian there seems to be very little interest in FutureLearn. Almost no comment on how the campus in the UK may be modified.​ 

​There is an argument being made. 

The bottom line is that there really is no replacement for face-to-face interaction between academics and students.

But I can't find anything about blended learning. The main objection seems to be about the commercial nature of some moocs. There is no proposal as to how the technology could be used differently. ​

The promise of moocs to improve access and democratise knowledge is a chimera.

Has this ever been much different for universities? I have found an earlier blog about the end of the public university in England. This mentions that  there were 457,000 students in 1971 – 14% of the age group.

I think that the mooc is reaching a wider public. I think this style of Guardian reporting is a bit misleading. Just because there is an academic critique the technology trends may not be reversed. Will there be any reports from the universities supporting FutureLearn? Maybe the Guardian Witness approach could help here. I live in Exeter and sometimes visit Lancaster so I will try to find out more. My impression is that both sites have been spending on spectacular architecture. Whether they balance this with web development on the scale of the OU I just don't know. ( I am following the Buzzmachine suggestion, journalism as reporting what you don't know)​

Also I hope to visit King's Cross, location for the British Library. I think the news of their involvement in FutureLearn was significant. The resource compares with libraries in Oxford and Cambridge, still reflecting on what to do about the mooc.​

Four stories to be repeated

I seem to have some relation to the witness contribution situation around the Guardian. It helps me to try things out. Stories can take various forms. This blog is best suited to probing or guessing. ​

Two stories from yesterday are still there. On Guardian Witness the EE topic of technology includes my note about phone cameras and bandwidth. I will come back to this somewhere and put in a link. I don't think I will submit photos or video. It appears that video ends up on the Guardian YouTube channel with a preroll ident. I may as well stick to my own channel and continue with Creative Commons. ​

n0tice has put a marker on their map for my mention of the Wild Show coffee break. We really do meet every week or at least someone will be there. I will mention this on Thursday. Thiscityscentre continues as a topic for the rest of this year so could relate to other high streets reported on n0tice. That's a number zero where the o might be.

​My suggestion for a story about Jeff Jarvis has not been accepted. ( 2days no reply safe to assume). I can understand thjis is maybe not a situation the Guardian wants to emphasise. In brief, way back Jeff Jarvis wrote about every other week in the Media pages on a Monday. Then this stopped. ( I did enquire about a formal date but got no reply). Then the Review on a Saturday described Jarvis as a "cyberhustler" and selectively quoted his choice of words about the BBC. But then he appears on the speaker list for a Guardian conference. So maybe he is back in favour or maybe it is just a grid of possible opinions. Either way it is a story to follow. Maybe it is just me who is confused about the Guardian mix of panic from literary critics and enterprising digital innovation.

The fourth story is about the mooc, the massive online open course. See next post.​