HDTV on a Teacher's Budget (part 2)

In the last post we looked at how important or less important screen size and contrast ratio are when you're selecting your amazing HDTV on a teacher's budget.

Today we're going to tackle a different number you'll see on your TV specs: screen resolution. This is usually represented as--for example--480p, 720p, or 1080i.

480p...720p...1080i...What does the “p” and “i” mean?

Progressive Scan: In the first instant, your screen shows one picture.
In the second instant, your screen shows a second picture.
In this way, your on-screen hero is given the illusion of moving,
even though you are only basically seeing photographs.
This digital idea reproduces what film projectors have
done since movies were invented.

First, take a second to think back to how a moving image was displayed to an audience many decades ago: the film projector would unwind a film roll of thousands of tiny pictures. Each completely motionless picture would pass before the display area so fast that the many pictures in quick succession would create the illusion of a moving person, horse, or circus clown.

Interlaced video: Instead of updating 100% of the picture
with every passing instant, interlaced video just
updates every other horizontal line. First it updates the
even lines, then the odd lines, and back and forth.

In the world of digital video on computer monitors and high-definition TVs, there are two different options for showing moving pictures: progressive (p) and interlaced (i). A progressive video pretends to be a roll of film by showing you thousands of motionless images, one after the other, creating the illusion of a moving train, dog, or lunch-break business tychoon. An interlaced video instead alternates horizontal lines across the screen: imagine if just the even rows down the side of a house changed to show a new image, then just the odd rows changed, then just the even rows changed, then just the odd rows changed... you get it.

The number in a TV resolution, for example “1080” in a big TV, represents the number of horizontal lines going down the TV when it shows an interlaced image, usually represented as 1080i.

Question: My TV is 1080p, but you just told me that it only shows one flat image at a time, like film. So what are there 1080 of?

Answer: Progressive TVs just retain the numbering system from interlaced images as a way of communicating to the buyer how highly-detailed your TV is. In this case, your 1080p TV is as highly detailed as a TV with 1080 horizontal lines of color information, even though yours does not use interchanging horizontal lines.

Many HDTVs now are only progressive, so you will only see 480p, 720p, and 1080p. The higher this number the more sweat glands you will be able to count on your favorite athlete during a game.

Worry Bout It Meter: Spilt Milk (care enough to clean it up, but don't cry about it). In my opinion, even the lowest high-defness of TVs today (about 480p) is plenty of high definition for me. I can't honestly say that I would notice the difference between these calibers of HD, so I'm guessing that for many people this is more of a NONfactor than they may at first think.

Next time:

HDTV on a Teacher's Budget (part 3)... we'll take care of how you can get HD media on your HD screen cheaply, and most importantly: the surprisingly MOST important and oft ignored thing about sealing that high definition experience. Stay tuned!

Microsoft Kinect: The "Justin Bieber" of Modern Gaming is Not Racist

This just in: after fielding sensational headlines that the Microsoft Kinect might be "racist" for not distinguishing well between multiple dark-skinned users, it turns out that the lights in the room just may have been too low. Not racist. Room too dark. Makes sense.


Confused about how I could compare the Microsoft Kinect to Justin Bieber? To find out again why the video game industry's potential next big concept is like Justin Bieber, please take a look here.

HDTV on a Teacher's Budget (part 1)

The holidays are coming. Will you do what I did at the end of the summer: tell yourself you've earned a home theater upgrade?

My wife and I used our laptops last year to watch any movies we wanted to see. Now that HDTVs are down to the $300-400 range for a 32” screen TV (a screen size that, although one of the smaller sizes in Best Buy, used to pass for the family set in my household), getting one just took some planning ahead and a revised “spending awareness” for several months.

We purposely aimed our sights for an elusive mark when shopping electronics: we wanted to drive the price as low as possible, but we also wanted a reliable product that serves our needs—not a cheap knock-off with a half-life like a gallon of milk left in the garage. In other words, we wanted to walk out of that store feeling that we had saved, not compromised. Well, we got what we wanted, and we rolled out of that store doing heel-clicks all the way to the car.

If you're thinking of doing the same thing for yourself in the next few months, and—like us—you are on a limited budget, here's what you need to know about what you really need in the high definition realm and what doesn't matter.

Screen Size: What They Recommend and What You Need

Some sources recommend about 4” of diagonal TV screen for every 12” you plan to sit away from that TV. We have a narrow living room, and our TV looks across the short dimension, not longways. That means that our couch is only about 8ft. away from the screen, which fits our 32” TV perfectly according to the popular recommendation. We're supremely happy with how well we can see our screen from across this short space.

Worry Bout It Meter: Flat Tire (pull over and take care of this, but you won't die). If you obey the strict recommendation of inches of screen to feet away from the TV, and if you have a large living room, you may find yourself unpleasantly compelled to up the ante at the cash register on the way out of the store. Be strong. Bring a tape measurer to the store to map out about how far away you plan to sit from the TV, and then YOU can make the decision!

Contrast Ratio: How Light is Light and How Dark is Dark

This is the number that describes the range of light and darkness your screen can handle. Presumably, if the number is big (like 1:1,000,000), then all the whites and light colors will look dazzling, and all the blacks and dark colors will look deep and shadowy. The other presumption is that a narrow range (like 1:10) would produce flat, virtually inseparable colors. For these reasons, many people want to boost this ratio to the maximum contrast available.

Here's the thing, however: although this is true on principle, after a certain point it's no longer distuingishable to the naked eye. Some companies even allegedly find a way to simply blacken their black colors twice as much, providing just about the same exact final image but enabling a TV company to advertise 1:1,000,000 instead of 1:500,000 for the contrast ratio. Then, because they made a subtle change invisible to the naked eye, these alleged companies allegedly add a block of money on the price tag because their TV is twice as powerful in this one small way.

Worry Bout It Meter: Fuh gedaboudit (not your problem, baby). I recommend all but ignoring the contrast ratio. Unless the ratio is horribly below the average competition, I say that a high-def TV a contrast ratio does not make.


Next time:
HDTV on a Teacher's Budger (part 2)... we'll look at what the "p" means in 720p and whether or not you need to stress about it.

Interview with a Youth Minister

Great sense of humor and understanding. "Youth Ministry" has post-graduate degrees both in Theology and in Making Youth Group Awesome. He has traveled far to bring home a greater sense of purpose and mission.


How do you use new technology at your job?
I am both a Youth Minister and a middle school teacher, and so I find myself using technology often. In YM it's mainly for communication to young people and their parents. Without using Facebook (and texting), I would not reach probably 70-80% of the kids I'm trying to reach. And email just makes it easier to stay in touch with parents. As a teacher, I use different media all the time in the classroom (short downloaded films shown on my projector) & mainly email to communicate with other teachers. 

Is there any new technology/website made in the last 5-7 years that you cannot live without?
There are three: my phone, Google calendars, and Dropbox. I recently dropped Outlook like a bad habit (which it is) and switched to Google calendar and my life has never been more seamless. ... (*sweet! Giants just won World Series!!!!*) ... It easily syncs with my phone and iCal on my Mac and updates in just seconds when I add an event. I also like that if I ever lose my phone I haven't lost my schedule for the whole year. Then there is Dropbox. I can access all my files on any computer I'm on...it's a great tool. And being able to use a SmartPhone where I can receive my emails and sync my calendar is priceless. It keeps me from spending 2 straight hours every day sifting through a bunch of email when I get to the office cause I can take them as they come.

Is there any new technology/website made in the last 5-7 years that seems useless to you?
Twitter. I still don't see the point, but obviously someone does since it's so wildly popular. Maybe I'm just not narcissistic enough to appreciate it.

What do you wish you could do with technology that you can't do now?
I'd like to think I'm forward thinking enough to come up with an answer to this question, but for some reason nothing is coming to me. I think I'm just inundated with figuring out how to bring the school into the 21st century with their technology.


[EDIT: Over the phone, "Youth Minister" and I discussed a new answer to this last question: a specific notification that all cars should give, alerting the driver what specific maintenance they should expect and why, including the last time such a maintenance was done and how frequently it should be done. We even pictured the Microsoft Paperclip, only this time it would be a wrench with eyes, popping up onto the windshield. "Did you know that your brake pads are close to needing a change? Would you like me to search for nearby auto repair shops now?" Why, yes I would! Thanks for asking!]

Smart Board Literacy: Get Students to Run the Lesson

Before
Title 1 funding brought smart boards and projectors to every classroom under its umbrella at my school recently. The mantra we heard was, "Use it. If you don't use it, you lose it." So for awhile it seemed like the foci of my lessons were about finding new ways to use the technology as opposed to finding how technology can advance and deepen student learning. I thought that I hit upon a good idea to use the smart board: an easy way to use it daily, make it useful for the students, and most importantly, never to be caught ignoring the expensive toys in the room during a surprise observation. The answer: daily grammar corrections. These are nice 5-minute warm-up activities for the students to start the day. When I ran out of silly sentences to write ("mary couldn deside of she wanted ice cream or cake?"), I eventually had another advancement: the sentences could be informative, either as announcements of important upcoming dates, or as an anticipatory preview for today's lesson ("today we'l learn about a women who broke all the rules to disover her dream Don't forget about the test on Monday!").

After writing down the sentences in their notebooks and making the corrections, students approach the board and make their own corrections on the screen. They all beg to be called on, so sometimes I really stock up on corrections (one day as much as fifteen). However, these can cost class time, so I have to balance affirming their enthusiasm at the expense of instructional time versus cutting back on a potential time waster at the expense of having an angry student disrupt the class.


New Idea
Recently I had an even better idea for how to use the smart board.


In the English classroom there are lots of fun things for students to do that utilize many "multiple intelligences" both before and after reading a text ("Do you mean, for example: visual, oral, and kinesthetic learning?" Yes, thank you, Howard Gardner. Now sit down and look at Rule #3 in my room: raise your hand next time). The better the "before reading" section is (we sometimes called that an "anticipation guide"), the more close reading you can get out of a fidgety little 6th grader before stopping and using what they read.

Before reading a couple of pages of biographical text (mind you, it was littered with "stopping points" to help and gauge student comprehension), I could have students get their hands dirty with the story elements that they could expect to find in their reading.


Students loved it! Many of them immediately asked me: Can it be longer than five sentences? Oh heck yes! It can be as long as you want! You can always take what I require and go further. I had students write PAGES of narrative using the elements I gave them on the screen, so much that I had to limit them to just present just the Cliff Notes version when they stood in front of the class.


Thanks to the smart board software, students had no qualms about presenting in front of the class. They marched right up to the front of the room, used their fingers to drag the little images to arrange them in the order that they pleased, and told their narratives as they did so. With the software, students can shrink, grow, rotate, and move all of the pictures on the screen. Many of the students creatively used ambiguous objects, such as the red circle, which became a basketball in one story. In another story as a highlighter, it was put squarely over Michelle Obama's face.


By the end of the storytelling activity, students had internalized what the elements on the screen were (globe, pilot doll, log cabin, Texas, royal crown, Michelle Obama, a cheering crowd, and an airplane). At this point, all I had to do was show them how they can be rearranged to tell the story that we were about to read:

Bessie Coleman left her humble beginnings in a Texan log cabin to travel the globe and learn to fly airplanes. Described as intelligent, beautiful, and well spoken (see: Michelle Obama), she gained popularity and was dubbed "Queen Bess" before dying suddenly and tragically at 34 years old. 


While I read the two pages with students, they were encouraged to read ahead and find out how she died--this might build a kind of literacy needed for informational text in which students scan subheadings while at the same time differentiating for more capable readers. However, students were told to not to give away the answer before we got to the ending. This helped build anticipation both for them and for students who did not look ahead to answer how she died.


In most classes, students anxiously read either along with me, or, taking turns, out loud to the rest of the class. Reading these pages and using the stopping points took as long as 30 minutes in some cases, which was a major victory for me and the 11 year old balls of energy with whom I share my classroom.


Implications: Carrying Literacies Further
I was amazed by the seemingly "sudden" literacies I saw: writing, speaking, and reading.


First, I was amazed by the willingness and fluency with which students wrote their narratives. Students who had very little interest in writing now had the language they wanted (the little pictures to choose from on screen) to craft a story much longer than the minimum three sentences, and in fact very few students held to just the bare minimum. When I do narrative writing assignments in the future, I think I will post a variety of random pictures on the screen and optional written phrases (ex. "Santa stole my..." and "Don't you dare call me a...") that students might choose to incorporate into their writing. It would be a little like an improv episode of "Whose Line Is It, Anyway?" in which characters are given some guidelines and requirements but left largely to their own devices.


The second thing that amazed me was the enthusiasm in which students presented in front of the class. The difference between this and a normal presentation, I think, was dragging pictures across the smart board screen using their little fingers. All of a sudden a student who felt awkward now had a physical job to do while telling her story. Some students loved doing both, but some students opted to call a friend up to the front to be the pointer and dragger. Both cases were fine with me. Maybe in the future we can plan actual "smart board" presentations, in which students will load pictures they've collected to be their visual aid during their speeches. I could definitely see that working.


Finally I was most amazed by the reading we did when we were done: (1) their lack of disruptions while we read, (2) their analytical questioning, and (3) ability to answer comprehension questions. Students seemed to understand and to care about the text. Both were very important to me; because "Queen Bess" is so similar in socio-demographics to my kids, I think she can be a wonderful role model.


As I told them:
Me: "Raise your hand if you were born in a one room, dirt floor cabin. It's ok, you can let us know. Bessie Coleman was born in a place like that."
[Some students raised their hands, grinning and probably lying.]
Me: "Good. I expect things as great from you as from Bessie Coleman. Now raise your hands if your birth circumstances were better than Bessie's, like if you were born in a hospital."
[Nearly everyone raised their hands.]
Me: "Good. I expect even greater things from you than from Bessie Coleman."

Interview with an Engineer

Intelligent, well spoken, and the father of a newborn baby, this engineer lets us know how technology has become a staple of his daily job--although from time to time it does let him down.


How do you use new technology at your job?
For my job, almost every piece of documentation can be found on a shared drive or "intranet" system. Also, equipment and power station manuals that would take up an entire wall of bookshelves can now fit on two DVDs and be accessed through Adobe pdf files. We also use internet/email/blackberries to communicate quickly and efficiently among industry and company peers. This helps us collaborate on issues while we may be working geographically far from one another.

Is there any new technology/website made in the last 5-7 years that you cannot live without?
Email is a must for my job. A lot of times the people within my work group are traveling to various power stations and some times even traveling over seas. Email is one way we can all colaborate quickly and efficiently on an issue. It alows us to have a record of our conversation as well as be able to share documents. 

Using BlackBerries helps us utilize email even more. I can take a photo of something while on a construction site, email it to a colleague and get a reply within minutes.

Videoscopes are a must for our job. A videoscope is a camera on the end of a long thin tube that you can "snake" into a machine. This allows us to check the condition of the unit during regularly scheduled maintenance or to check out potential problems without unnecessarily disassembling the machine. Unnecessary dissassembly can cost the company 100s of thousands of dollars.

Is there any new technology/website made in the last 5-7 years that seems useless to you?
Hmmm, good question. I am not that technologically savvy or up to date so I am not sure. I can think of things that never really took off like the "lazer video disc" or beta video tapes but besides that, no.

What do you wish you could do with technology that you can't do now?
Yes, I'd like good cell phone and mobile internet coverage EVERYWHERE! Right now I commute to rural [county name] everyday and it is almost impossible to make a phone call during the drive due to bad cell coverage.

Microsoft Kinect: The Justin Bieber of Motion Gaming?

You  may be wondering what Justin Bieber has to do with motion gaming. Stay tuned.

Don Reisinger posted an article on Slash Gear that explains his disillusionment with the new Microsoft Kinect, a new device that uses your body's motions to communicate control commands to the video game. He argues that he's not interested in games that make him stand up and act out what his character does on screen. Just because it might be more realistic to swing your arms than to push A or B on the controller, the gaming experience does not necessarily improve, he says.


I'm with you, Don. Sometimes the less "realistic" controlling systems--ye old classic controller--are best for breaking down the wall between the mind of the gamer and the mind of the character. For years I've been telling my kid brother that a turn-based RPG is in fact more realistic than their early "action" counterparts. If the goal of gaming is to make less obvious the disconnect between sitting on a couch while staring lifelessly ahead and slaying well armored fire ogres with my +50 sword of might, then selecting "Attack" and my hero swinging the blade are two actions both fluid, reflexive, and well controlled. Perfect. On the other hand, trying to master A+B << V > Start  X and wondering why my battle-hardened on-screen warrior can't draw arms in the face of danger doesn't make me think, "Now I'm doing it. I'm vanquishing evil."

Of course, Don is saying that this new technology works well, so maybe the intentions of the gamer won't as easily mismatch with the hero ("Swing the sword, dang it! No! Block! NOOOOO!!!"). What do you other people think?

And what does Justin Bieber have to do with motion gaming like the Microsoft Kinect? Both devices are used by major American corporations to connect with a younger audience by offering the illusion that the walls are coming down between themselves and their fantasies. And both try to make you dance like a fool on the living room floor. Well I for one will have none of it.