Creativity and Technology (Kreativität und Technik)

Gitta Domik, Department of Computer Science, University of Paderborn

email: domik[at]uni-paderborn.de

homepage of author:
http://www.cs.uni-paderborn.de/index.php?id=209&L=1

homepage of courses (in German):
http://www.cs.uni-paderborn.de/de/fachgebiete/ag-domik/lehre/projektgruppen/projektgruppe-kreativitaet-und-technik.html,
http://www.cs.uni-paderborn.de/de/fachgebiete/ag-domik/lehre/vorlesungen/ss03-kreativitaet-und-technik.html

paper: Creat-Comp.pdf

• Title of course: "Creativity and Technology" (Kreativität und Technik)

• Aimed at what category of students: Computer Science students (Graduate level) and Media Study students (all levels)

• Educators: CS department

• Who is teaching: Gitta Domik

• Goal of course(s):

  • The goal was to have students of different disciplines work on the same project.
    
    In order to be able to communicate with each other, though coming from a different knowledge background, the students needed a common “language”. This was accomplished by using the same multimedia tool (SIMBA) to teach both kinds of students, but teaching them at different levels of depth.

• Prerequisites: Computer Graphics courses for CS students; no prerequisites for Media Study students

• Topics for lectures:

  • definitions of computer-generated visualization
  • history of computer-generated visualization
  • data and data models
  • user and tasks
  • mapping techniques from data to pictures
  • complex presentation techniques
  • creativity and computing
  • color models (only for Media study students)
  • Maya (by Alias) (only Media study students)
  • Flash and Shockwave (both by Macromedia) (only for Media study students)

• Topics for seminar (only for CS students):

  • multitude of topics on 3D Web Technology

• Topic for project (CS students and Media students together):

  • build a client-server based tool for remote visualization based solely on open source technology
  • test with data set modeling a terrain, including simulated data of wind direction, pressure, humidity, and temperature for each defined volume position in space over the terrain and over time
  • build graphical elements to aid interpretation of CS project data

• Teaching software:

  • The author built and used SIMBA, an educational tool based on multimedia concepts to teach and learn key concepts of Computer Science. A subset of SIMBA (“SIMBA - computer pictures” / ”SIMBA - Computerbilder”) focuses on computer-generated visualization and computer-generated color and was used with different depth levels (go into deeper levels for CS students, stay at the upper levels with non-CS students) to teach lectures for both categories of students.

• Special Applications: The project evolved around Environmental Sciences

• Language: Mostly in German