Please note you can find a new version of the app here
A few months ago my school was nice enough to get me a Kinect. This was before the SDK had came out. I had found out how to use open source software to get the mouse control my screen instead of using the interactive whiteboard. I thought that this could be brilliant for teachers who were going from mobile to mobile! You could do simple quiz’s and the students will be enthralled by the technology.
Since the SDK has been released, I have been trying out lots of different things and my major breakthrough game today when I discovered a blog by Michael Crump. I would like to thank him because I was a little stumped at which direction to co in, until I read his page. He had been playing around the SDK and he made a resource to help people make buttons. This was the major problem I had. I could get it detect movement but not to click. This resource helped me get in the right direction and I was able to complete a full resource on databases which I intend to use in my classes.
Another great resource which helped me with my coding was the channel9.msdn.com website. It had over 6 pages of programs which people had made and a lot of them were showing the source codes so that you can edit and manipulate them. After all not many people I know write coding from scratch. It’s all about using what’s available to help you make something productive.
If you look at the video below, you will be able to see the example of how the program I made works and there are links again to the various websites I used.
You can download the source code here so that you can play around with and change the questions / answers to suit your class. You will notice that I increased the score if the answer was correct, however I just moved on to the next question if the answer was incorrect so that students can compete for the highest score.
You can download the SDK from here.
Another good website where you can download some great tools to start you off is the coding4fun website. Click here for more information.
Hardware
- Kinect for Xbox 360 sensor
- Computer with a dual-core, 2.66-GHz or faster processor
- Windows 7–compatible graphics card that supports DirectX® 9.0c capabilities
- 2-GB RAM (4-GB RAM recommended)
Software
- Windows 7 (x86 or x64)
- Visual Studio 2010 Express (or other 2010 edition)
- Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0
- For additional requirements for samples, see the Readme file
Thanks for the shout-out Ray!
BTW, I’ve just written up the Coding4Fun Kinect Gallery entry for this post and it’s scheduled for Tuesday morning (9/6/2011, 6AM PDT).
Thanks again for the shout-out. It’s great to know that the Gallery is indeed helping. More importantly, thank you for giving back yourself!
Greg
Thank you Greg; It’s no problem at all – I’m really interested in how it’s used for education and I’m just trying anything to be honest in hopes that it will help others.
Thank you for the shout out as well.
Ray