Thursday, August 28, 2014

Ed Catmull

I don't know about you, but I've always found it hard to get my head around stuff like

F(x,y)=x*y^3-y*x^3

As a boy, I'd chew my pencil and stare out of the window and wish I was playing with my kite or riding my bicycle. With dreams of being a navigator I would need not just to pass maths, I'd need an A. Easty (we called him that because his brain had gone west) failed to capture my imagination. The chalk squeaked on the blackboard and some days tears would well up as I tried to get to grips with it all. Mr Kirkwood's class was a slight improvement, we plotted parabolas on graph paper. We weren't sure what parabolas were for, but at least there was a physical manifestation, a drawing on a piece of paper.

Not until I was 17 and attending sea school did it all start to make some sense, because now there was a globe, and angles subtended at the centre of the earth, and arcs described on the surface of the earth. Arcs along which you could steam a ship.

But now, in second childhood, I am happy playing on my Chromebook...

Read the full post on the CORE Eduction blog

DIY VR


My colleague Rochelle Savage tries out the home made viewing specs. If you get the distance just right and relax your eyes they work remarkably well. They're something anyone can make with salvaged items and a glue gun. This is the approach we're encouraging: improvise; quick; easy; and low budget. You're just using this 3D VR stuff as an object-to-think-with, you really don't need the state-of-the-art consumer experience.