Visualization Wall Update

Fall 2015 was the first full semester since the Diane Y. Williams ’59 Visualization Wall was installed in the Technology Commons of Shain Library. We saw new and innovative uses of the wall by professors and students in a range of departments.

Here are just some of the ways courses made use of the wall this past fall:

• AHI/THE297—Professor Sabrina Notarfrancisco’s Costume History students met at the wall many times throughout the semester, displaying their individual visual research wirelessly from their DELI iPads.
• BIO110—Professor Martha Grossel’s Accelerated Cell Biology students met on Mondays for their course and used the wall to simultaneously and wirelessly display the results of group work from their laptops. Up to five laptops or mobile devices can be displayed at the same time.
• Women’s Rowing teams—Coach Eva Kovach’s team members used the wall to review team practice footage with a telecaster iPad app. The app allowed Kovach to play footage in slow-motion and mark it up, so that students could better see how their form could be improved.
• AT222a—The Ammerman Center for Arts & Technology’s Visiting Mellon Fellow Caroline Park’s Experimental Music class made use of the visualization wall’s sound system and connected with guest artists via Skype.
• Architectural Studies—Visiting Professor Emily Morash held an architectural Lego event and information fair at the wall to attract students to the Architectural Studies program. Current students in the program shared their Study Away experiences on the wall during the event.

During Fall Weekend, three students of the Ammerman Center for Arts & Technology also presented the latest iteration of a project they began on the visualization wall last spring semester for Professor Steve Luber’s History of Arts and Technology course. For one of the class’s three-week lab modules, students made use of the wall’s technological capabilities—in this case, its touch-enabled interactive display—and designed projects focused on the theme of social media. One group used Unity software to create the prototype for an interactive visual hierarchy that would make professional relationships and job duties of administrative staff at Connecticut College more transparent. Since then, Ray Coti ’16, Virginia Gresham ’17, and Joey Mercado ’16 received a grant from CCSRE to develop the project further, with a new interface and an updated database. Users can touch and drag the pictures of administrators to see who reports to them and what their responsibilities include. Eventually, the group hopes to add more layers of data, including committee membership and other staff involvement.

If you are interested in taking advantage of the wall’s ability to display multiple devices (computers, laptops, tablets, smart phones, media players, cable TV, etc.) simultaneously, its touch-enabled interactive screen or 4k resolution, please contact Lyndsay Bratton for more information and scheduling.