Computer Science Education Week: Day 2!
We hope you’re having a great Computer Science Education Week! This week, we are sharing some exciting and often surprising applications of computer science that will hopefully inspire your students.
Touchable Holograms Interact with Human Hands
Japanese scientists have invented a “touchable” hologram that changes shape in response to human hand movements. The scientists see uses for the hologram in entertainment, medicine, and architecture. It also has more specific practical uses, like the ability to type on a virtual keyboard, rather than having to carry around an actual physical keyboard.
Using Computer Science for Storytelling
We all know that Disney tells great stories. What if you had the same tools at your fingertips that Disney does to create the stories that you want to tell? Disney Research is finding ways to bring your imagination to life visually through digital storytelling. By creating a graphical interface that allows users to create situations and characters that interact with each other, Disney hopes to empower people to create dynamic worlds, tell their stories and share them with each other. Creating the tools for these stories requires a ton of programming — of places, people, things, and the way all of those things interact with each other.
Virtual Identities Affect Real-World Personalities
Everyone has an online presence now — whether through Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter, or even online games like League of Legends or Minecraft. Ever wondered how your online activity affects your real-world self? How are these identities, both online and in the real world, different or the same? Researcher D. Fox Harrell explores these sorts of questions using AI machine-learning techniques to discover biases and assumptions that exist in our online worlds. He has also created a platform called Chimeria that allows for more diversity in the online world, particularly in games that use avatars.
Can you come up with some ways that a touchable hologram could be used? What sort of story world do you want to create? Do you play any games that use avatars? Do you feel like you’re able to create an avatar that accurately reflects your real-world self?
Let us know in the comments or by reaching out to us on twitter @CodeHS! And tune back in tomorrow to learn about more cool applications of computer science.
