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Michael Hanley's elearning blog covering workplace learning and training, technology in education, e-learning tools and technologies, learning 2.0 (including blogs and podcasts), and continuous professional development.
...this tool is exciting, [and] exhibits great potential, but needs a little work to get it past the finish line. Having said that, I can easily see it being a common part of the web experience in time to come, particularly if the developers can sustain the "fun factor" supplied by navigating through content in this environment.
I'm pleased to say that since then Cooliris has moved forward. While updating my Foxmarks today, what should I see on their (Foxmarks') homepage but the self-same Cooliris, under their 'Other add-ons we like' category. If you'd like to try the application for yourself, click here to go to their website.
In my view it's great that there are fun educational applications available; when confronted with the task of providing learning and development services for the organizations and institutions that we're involved with, it's sometimes easy to forget that above all else, learning should be a rewarding experience for everyone.
So well done to PicLens and maintain the development effort guys!
I was contacted last week by a software development house to take a look at and review Cooliris, their Web photo viewer and (potential) business/learning presentation tool. As long as there's a valid e-learning or learning and development application or usage I'm happy to oblige.
Now read on...
Cooliris is a browser-based three-dimensional graphical user interface (GUI) featuring a full-screen interactive '3D Wall' that uses an Apple Cover Flow-style approach to viewing visual media assets such as images from the web, and to enable users to interact with PowerPoint-style presentations. The real-world kinetic motion of Cooliris simplifies the process of searching for and navigating through slide decks and image libraries. Table 1 shows the range of features that the application supports:
Table 1 Cooliris features
Feature
Location
Function
3D Wall
The rows of images on the black background
Allows an immersive view of thousands of images and videos in seconds.
Discover
The icon is on the top left
Press the Discover icon and 11 channels that feature the latest news feeds from across the web. These channels range from news to fashion. We're currently featuring an Olympics channel that has all the visual highlights from Beijing.
Sharing Login
Top left "Login" icon
Click and a drop down box will appear asking for username and password. New? Register!
Share
Top right envelope and pencil in the metadata box
Click to send an email to a friend that encloses any images or videos you've found interesting in the PicLens interface. To add more than one image or video, drag the images and videos you want next to the image or video you already have in the message.
Slideshow Full Screen Mode
Bottom left box with four arrows in the corners
Takes viewer into full screen slideshow mode. This mode is also accessible by double clicking any image. Double click image to escape or press the Cooliris grid icon in bottom left.
Shopping
Search bar in the top right
Click the search bar and select Amazon from the drop down box to start the next generation online shopping experience.
Not within the PicLens interface, but by following the instructions detailed on the site, webmasters can easily enable their own websites with PicLens. All their visitors with PicLens can then view images and videos from the website within PicLens.
YouTube
Search bar in the top right
Click the search bar and select YouTube from the drop down box. Viewers can search and view YouTube videos within PicLens.
Once you have installed the Cooliris plug-in images are displayed on a virtual "wall" as you can see from Figure 1. If you are practised in the art of "skimming" text in articles or blogs, you will be familiar with the technique used to search for image resources in this type of environment; my initial impression after using the tool is that very quickly you can scan a range of images and let the one you're looking for "emerge" from the wall.
Figure 1 Cooliris UI
Once you click on an image you're interested in, it centers on the screen and scales up so that you can view it in more detail. From a learning professional's perspective, this has certain advantages. if like me, you have amassed a large library of resources that you regularly use when developing courseware this enables you to search quickly through a range of visual media assets to find appropriate images, charts, diagrams and video to insert into presentations and / or e-learning content.
At this point though, the fact that this is an early version of an application becomes apparent: there is no easy way to save an image to a location as it does not support contextual menus (i.e. via right-clicking on a PC mouse or CTRL-clicking on the Mac) and therefore no "Save image as.." function. You can e-mail the image to yourself, but if you're used to undertaking this activity in two or three gestures, in my view this will impede your workflow. I'm sure this limitation will be addressed in future releases but for the moment it reduces the effectiveness of the tool as a pre-production application.
Figure 2 Cooliris Plug-in for PowerPoint
However, the developers have positioned this application as a presentation tool, and to facilitate this functionality they have provided a PowerPoint add-in which enables you to generate a Cooliris version of a PowerPoint presentation for delivery online or in the classroom. Clicking on the Create Piclens Gallery button (see Figure 2) generates an HTML-based viewer for your presentation. You can click here to view a full-screen version of a sample presentation, or enjoy the YouTube version below.
In summary, I like Cooliris and in assessment would award it a 'C+' - more potential to be realized.
I think that it's a utility that has a future as a presentation tool, makes very good use of technology and seems to coexist very comfortably in the dynamic presentation domain. As a learning tool, it would certainly inspire learners to maintain interest in content being displayed using the technology.
So far, so good.
On the negative side, there are a number of functionality deficiencies to be resolved (I have already mentioned the lack of an easy 'Save as'...' feature) such as PowerPoint animations are lost in the Cooliris conversion process, which would require partial re-authoring of content to enable the same progress through a presentation. Other points to be mentioned include that while it supports Firefox (Windows XP/Vista and Mac), Internet Explorer, and Safari 3.0 (Mac), it doesn't support Opera or Safari 3.1. Similarly there is currently no Linux version of the plug-in, though the developers say that this is on the way.
Finally, I've found that it's a bit of a trial to enable Cooliris on a website. If you want your site to be interpreted via Cooliris, there's a process to be undertaken to activate the functionality:
Enter in the name of a website that has images. The website should have a gallery of pictures that all have consistent name paths (ex. thumbs/image.jpg-->fulls/image.jpg, image1_thumb.jpg-->image2_full.jpg, etc.)
Next, select the thumbnail of a picture you want to show up in Cooliris. After you click it, select the full size image of the thumbnail.
Select a different thumbnail, and then the corresponding full size image, just as you did in the last step. We use the couple examples you give us to infer the other images you'll want in Cooliris.
You should see a green rectangle with a "test site" button. Click it. If you don't see the green rectangle, try adding examples until it pops up.
Click the test page to see a preview of your page. If you don't see all the pictures you wanted on the wall, give us more examples and we'll try to get it right.
After you've tested your site, click the download button. This will start a download of cooliris-quick.xml. We use this file to understand your site.
Figure 3 Activating Cooliris on a website
Upload the file to any directory on your site. Click here for more information on uploading.
After you've up uploaded, give us the absolute address of cooliris-quick.xml on your webspace.
Then (!) copy and paste the link into the head tag of each web page you've Cooliris enabled.
I'm afraid at the moment that the costs outweigh the benefits of undertaking this task if you have a site containing more that about ten pages of content, especially considering that the application is not yet well-embedded in the average web user's web-surfing toolkit. This really must be simplified if the application is to be used by the kind of web-behavior influencers (including social networking sites) that would motivate average users to go to the trouble of installing this utility.
In conclusion, my view is that this tool is exciting, exhibits great potential, but needs a little work to get it past the finish line. Having said that, I can easily see it being a common part of the web experience in time to come, particularly if the developers can sustain the "fun factor" supplied by navigating through content in this environment.
Michael Hanley is a training & development consultant working and living in Dublin, Ireland. He has eleven years professional experience in Learning & Development, a M.Sc (Hons) in Education, and is a member of the Irish Institute of Training & Development. He consults, advises on and develops training and elearning solutions for a number of companies and academic institutions.
The E-Learning Curve Blog is about some aspects of his work. He is researching how work-based learning initiatives enable workers to achieve organizational goals in a corporate environment, and approaches to measuring subsequent organizational and employee performance.
The E-learning Curve Blog is Michael Hanley's elearning blog focusing on enhancing skills, knowledge, and expertise through the use of digital media and technology. It includes views on workplace learning and organizational development. I also look at learning theory (cognitive and constructivist approaches to learning), as well as elearning best practice: approaches to online learning, Web-based training (WBT), rapid e-learning, learning 2.0 (including wikis and blogs), learning content development, synchronous and asynchronous delivery of learning content, open source learning tools, virtual and personal learning environments, approaches to communication and collaboration to enhance learner development.
While updating my Foxmarks today, what should I see on their (Foxmarks') homepage but the self-same Cooliris, under their 'Other add-ons we like' category. If you'd like to try the application for yourself, click here to go to their website. 
