Ellis Students Gigapan Places of Worship

Ellis students have been Gigapanning different places of worship. Here you see two students pretty well soaked by the rain at the Hindu Jain Temple in Monroeville, PA.
We were treated to a nice tour, but we were not allowed to photograph inside. However, the outside of the temple is also quite beautiful.

Posted by Karen Kaighin, the instructor of students at the Ellis School.
The students are Valiha (with her coat on her head) and Annie.

Connecting Somali students from Pittsburgh to Nijmegen, Netherlands

Journey To A Notherland is a project that connects students in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with students in Nijmegen, Netherlands. We exchange ideas, artwork and creativity with one another. Although the two groups of students live across the world, many of the students come from very similar backgrounds. We talk about community, food, clothing, and music as the main sources of our work. The students in the Pittsburgh group come from various backgrounds: Some are 100% Pittsburgh, and have lived here their entire life. Others have moved from other places. Many of our students come from Africa, with a large population of Somali refugees now living in Pittsburgh. The parallel group of students in Nijmegen consist primarily of Somali refugee  and 1st generation students now living in the Netherlands. To learn more, visit http://journeytoanotherland.wordpress.com/

This is an ongoing project between Nijmegen and Pittsburgh. We have recently received some exciting letters from our pen-pals in the Netherlands. For now, we wish to share some of the activities we have enjoyed together thus far! 

The Pittsburgh group decided to take photos outside of Arsenal Middle School, at the beautiful park behind it. We took two trial photos. Unfortunately, I was having trouble setting up the automatic button shooter, so I had to take each photo manually. This meant I could not join our students in jumping into multiple frames of the photo.

http://gigapan.org/gigapans/93202/options/nosnapshots/iframe/flash.html

This photo, as you can tell is somewhat inside out, but it has a cool effect. It is taken at Arsenal Park, showing our students playing in the Autumn park before Sunset!

http://gigapan.org/gigapans/93208/options/nosnapshots/iframe/flash.html

http://gigapan.org/gigapans/93226/options/nosnapshots,hidetitle/iframe/flash.html

This was our Pittsburgh student's first try at the GigaPan. After selecting a scene and setting up the height and width that would be the GigaPan, the students jumped into frames as I tried to direct them. A cool lesson we learned from this activity was that some time accidents help you discover something new, or make something beautiful. In these photos, we are collaged over each other and blending into one another. In the second GigaPan, the finished product has the sky up top and below the ground. What does having the sky above you and below you make you think of? For one, it reminds us of our relation to the sun, and that our friends in the Netherlands are in a different timezone 6 hours ahead, where the sun may have gone down just that much. It also makes us think about the way we are constantly moving, from classroom to classroom, from block to block, or the way we have moved from country to country and are now standing on a new ground.

Hines Ward, Clairton and USA Network!

Hines Ward and students at Clairton High School involved in Hear Me 101 will be featured in “NFL Characters Unite,” a documentary that premieres tonight at 7 p.m. on the USA Network.

Hear Me connected USA Network producers with Clairton City School District through Hear Me 101 in advance of the filming. Common themes among the students are a desire to raise their community up, become role models and to be seen and heard as positive people.  Hines Ward and students at Clairton High School involved in Hear Me 101 will be featured in “NFL Characters Unite,” a documentary that premieres tonight at 7 p.m. on the USA Network.
 
Watch the trailer!

 


Another successful WaterBot installation

On Thursday December 8, CREATE supported the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy to pilot their first WaterBot in Frick Park.  The Parks hope to use it to monitor CSO (combined sewage overflow) from nearby storm drains that have long been a concern in the 9-mile run watershed.  The Parks will use WaterBot as part of their service learning programs, in which youth participate as eco-stewards and volunteer time to clean up the streams.  The weatherproof Bot is secured to a t-post in the ground and the sensor, attached to a cable, floats in the stream, collecting data every 15 minutes.  We look forward to growing the pilot program in the Spring!



After a short picnic of cookies and hot chocolate, Taiji Nelson wades into the creek to determine the best monitoring spot:  somewhere the Bot could be concealed to prevent tampering, but also get the most accurate readings.  Below, Taiji and Max Buevich from CREATE Lab drive the t-post into the stream bed.

A successful installation - the netbook is already picking up data transmitted from WaterBot!

time lapse gigapan of downtown Pittsburgh yesterday

This is first followup on the time lapse photography done yesterday.

Randy and others (Anne, Josh, and Dror) were shooting from about 6am to midnight yesterday. Randy said that over 60,000 photographs (at 18 megapixels each) were captured; one every four seconds, on each of four cameras, clicking in unison. The cameras captured sunrise, morning commute, midday traffic, the coming & going of clouds over the city, coal barges going up & down the river, evening commute, sunset, moonrise, drivers & ferry boats streaming toward Heinz Field, and the Steelers game!

It will be days until all of these images are stitched into a zoomable video, but in the meantime, here are some snapshots.

photo album: https://picasaweb.google.com/111415749895648787719/TimeLapseGigapanFromMtWash...

 

Josh & Randy

 

Four Canon T2i's running off a car battery, each camera had a 128 GB memory card.


Randy, 7pm

time lapse gigapan being shot of downtown Pittsburgh all day Thu 12/8

Randy Sargent is shooting a panoramic zoomable time lapse (aka time lapse gigapan) all day Thursday December 8 from the sidewalk of McArdle Roadway 100 lateral feet from the top

(location is at center of this map)

The panorama will include most of this view (click link)

He plans to be at that location shooting picures every second or two from 5:30am until 11pm!

If you're in the area, you could drop by and say hi. Or if you bike/walk along the Mon Wharf or some other location downtown visible from the top of McArdle Roadway, you'll be in the video! Wear bright colors!

Here's a simple time lapse of the Paddle-at-the-Point event last year, shot with a single camera. Thursday's time lapse will use four cameras shooting in unison.


(I posted this same message to the bike-pgh bboard http://bike-pgh.org/bbpress/topic/appear-in-a-time-lapse-video-of-downtown-on-thu-128#post-90344 to publicize it some).


-Paul

Reception and walking tour of "Panoramics & Precision" today at 4:30pm

Join us for a Reception and walking tour of “Panoramics & Precision”, a new exhibit of large scale Gigapan prints installed in the School for Computer Science. This afternoon at 4:30pm in the 5200 corridor of GHC. Light refreshments will be served, and the event is open to the public.

The prints have been previously on display at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
 

The press release is available at http://news.cs.cmu.edu/article.php?a=2747


See PDF for location of prints around the building.



Gigapan Expedition to Carrie Furnace

On Wednesday, Ron Baraff of Rivers of Steel and Dror led us on a photo-expedition to Carrie Furnace in Rankin, where iron was made for most of the 20th century -- a furnace that helped to make Pittsburgh the steel center of the world.  The furnace was shut down in the 1980s, and has been rusting since.  Rivers of Steel has secured National Historic Landmark status for the site with the National Park Service.  Money and volunteer work are needed to preserve the site so that someday it can be opened to the public.  Our goal that day was to improve the photographic record of this incredible site.

Pictured below, Clara, Richard Palmer, Ron Baraff, Brian (a photographer from Pop City, who also happened to be there), and Dror prepare tripods, panoheads, and cameras.

Clara went up into the control room of the ore bridge (a huge gantry crane) and shot a gigapan of its interior. http://gigapan.org/gigapans/86489/

I climbed up to the top of one of the furnaces and got a view down on the ore bridge and the skip cars (buckets) that were used to haul iron ore, limestone, and coke to the top of the furnace.

Those ingredients get dumped into the feed hopper here.

More photos here:

 

Gigapan zoomable photos I shot are here:

view from bleeder valve - very high!

 

from near top of blast furnace 6

 

feed hopper above blast furnace 6

 

stationary car dumper

 

control room on ore bridge

 

outside ore bridge crane control room
skip pit

 

Dror photographed the electrostatic precipitators

 

Paul Heckbert
CREATE Lab

Gigapan as an Elective

Last school year in the spring I offered a Gigapan class as an elective.  It proved very interesting.  The kids that signed up for the class were kids who struggled in academic classes due to reading and writing challenges.  This was a great opportunity to get them engaged in reading and writing through gigapan. 

As the trimester started, I showed them lots of gigapan pictures to get them excited about the actual gigapan camera.  Then I taught them how to use the camera around school, both inside and outside.  Eventually, some of the students wanted to take the gigapan camera home and try out their skills.  Having kids actually take the pictures, post them, and write comments and questions enabled them to grow academically and socially.

My particular class had kids who otherwise would not talk to each other.  Gigapan became an avenue of collaboration for them.  They began to work together in the set up of the camera, deciding what to take pictures of, and working on the final presentation by posting questions and writing comments.  These gigapan "conversations" within our classroom helped them develop respect and concern for each other.  The gigapan brought us together as a class.  Lastly, the kids in the elective began to feel privileged because they knew how to do something that other kids didn't know how to do.

Overall, the gigapan elective was a great experience for the kids and myself. I would love to do it again and get the kids involved in documenting their community service projects.  Gigapan opens doors for kids and adults through panoramic pictures and conversations.

Ms. Johnson
Propel Braddock Hills High School

Summer Dreamer's Academy- Peace Rally

One of Hear Me's favorite organizations in Pittsburgh, the Marilyn G. Rabb Foundation, is preparing for the Peace Rally!  This is the culminating event for their Summer Dreamer's Academy students.  Make sure to stop by Market Square on Tuesday, August 9th to see the amazing performances by these students!!