Colleges Look to ‘Big-Screen Research’ to Stay Relevant and Collaborative
;;;;;;;;;
W;;;; ;;;;;; became af- fordable, the ;lm indus- try worried that people
would stop going to the movies.
Theaters haven’t
gone away, but
they have changed,
with many now focused on delivering
spectacles that can
be seen only in a grand setting, with
a big screen and booming sound.
JEFFREY R.
YOUNG
College 2.0
Traditional colleges now face a
similar challenge, thanks to free
or low-cost courses delivered online. One response may come from
a Hollywood-style trend emerging
on some campuses: large-scale video walls. These banks of high-de;-nition monitors are designed to let
students and researchers show images in a larger-than-life form to see
details more clearly and collaborate
better. Call it Big-Screen Research.
Here at the Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity, for instance, a 12-by-7-foot
video display will soon greet visi-
tors to the main library. It’s a feature
of a new “learning commons” wing,
where the emphasis is not on books
but on online materials and group-
project work. The video wall, which
will let students and professors share
information from their smartphones
or laptops, is designed to get people’s
heads out of their computers.
N;; ‘M;;;;;;; R;;;;;’
Last week I got a sneak peak at
Hopkins’s wall, which at the mo-
ment is in a garage-like computer-
science laboratory nicknamed the
“robotorium.”
The rig consists of 12 wide-screen
monitors linked together to form
one rectangular display. It’s topped
by a video-game component called
Kinect, made by Microsoft for its
Xbox to let people control games
using gestures. Many academics
and software developers now use the
low-cost Kinect to control comput-
ers as well.
The developers are aware that the
system seems straight out science
;ction—it’s similar to the computers in the 2002 movie Minority Report, in which Tom Cruise’s character searches ;les by swiping his
hands in front of a bank of computer
screens, moving data like a conductor leading an orchestra.
This interface isn’t quite up to that
Hollywood level, however. When I
step up to try it, I extend my left arm
toward a “menu” button and wait for
the selection to activate. The cursor moves to the correct spot, but the
system suddenly crashes. Mr. Hager
sounds more curious than frustrated
as he watches. “You provided a unique
crash,” he later says, as if to thank me
for participating in the research.
Mr. Choudhury notes that one of
his challenges is “managing expectations” about how smoothly Hopkins’s
homegrown system can work. It’s going to be in one of the most public areas on campus—each year the university’s main library has a “gate count”
of more than a million visits—so he
wants to make sure people understand
that it’s also a research project.
To Mr. Hager, any glitch should
serve as a challenge to computer-science students on the campus, who
will be invited to work on improv-
key to
“Research is our national security.”
Joanne Esparza
Division Manager, Information Sciences and
Security Systems Department
NMSU Physical Science Laboratory
At New Mexico State University, Joanne Esparza oversees numerous Department of Defense contracts that safeguard the nation on the ground and miles above the
skyline. Her work at NMSU’s Physical Science Laboratory serves government agencies with engineering support as well as research and development. Renowned for
their expertise, Esparza and her team were selected by General Dynamics Inc. to collaborate in developing the next generation of ground stations for NASA’s Tracking
& Data Relay Satellite System.
MissionSupport.nmsu.edu
New Mexico State University
