Update on Cistern GUI & Lighting and Intro to Teaching Module

Here is an update on the 3D data visualization project! I have been working on fixing the lighting, and I also added functionality to select between the different cistern models. Available models are: M'dina Cathedral Sacristy, Case Cutietta, House Ta'anna, and Convento Dei Cappuccinni.

Here is a live link: http://users.csc.calpoly.edu/~zwood/ICEX/Cistern/shading.html but it does not include the updated lighting code as of now. It will be updated soon!

If you have Safari and the link says “Could not initialize WebGL” refer to the following steps:

1. In Safari, open the Safari menu and select Preferences.

2. Then, click the Advanced tab in the Preferences window.

3. Then, at the bottom of the window, check the Show Develop menu in menu bar checkbox.

4. Then, open the Develop menu in the menu bar and select Enable WebGL.

Here are some screen shots:

M'dina Cathedral Sacristy

M'dina Cathedral Sacristy

House Dar Ta'anna

Convento Dei Cappuccinni

Case Cutietta

Case Cutietta

I have added functionality to remove the water, the textures, and the lighting as desired by the user. My next task is to add an overview of Malta, and allow the user to see the overview of the location of the different cisterns, and then be able to select which one they want to view. I am very excited to get started on this project and I look forward to sharing the results! This is going to be my final project for our graphics class.

Amanda and I are working to develop a teaching module that relates to the history of water in Malta, and explains the importance of water conservation and various conservation techniques. We have created two activities that will be part of our two, 45-minute lesson plans that will be available on the Water Ways website!

The first activity is called Clothesline Timeline of Malta’s History with Emphasis on Water and Society. The students will be given a few paragraphs on different topics about Malta's history. A few of the topics include the Knight's of St. John, French occupation, and World War II. We talk about the history as well as more recent water events. The students will then summarize the topic with a few sentences and pictures on a piece of paper, including the name and date of the event. These papers will be put together on a clothesline or string with clips attaching the papers in the order the events occurred. The students will then introduce the topic they read to the entire class so everyone can learn about all the different topics.

The second activity is called the The Effect of Water Scarcity in Malta. Students will be divided into groups, which will be called “neighborhoods.” In each neighborhood, the students will have a set amount of paper water droplets representing their water supplies. The students will be given a sheet which allows them to select how often they use water (from showering, gardening, etc). They will then have to calculate how much water they use per day and determine if between their neighborhood they will have enough water in their supply. Since the activity focuses on Malta, water shortages will be faced. The students will have to brainstorm different water conservation techniques as well as different water collection techniques. The students will have a follow up homework assignment that provides data from water usage and consumption in Malta.

The learning objectives for this activity are as follows:
1. Further students understanding of water scarcity in Malta
2. Help students realize the importance of water preservation
3. Understand the effect of personal actions with relation to the water supply

Andrew is going to make a graphical model of this activity as part of his final graphics project, so we are hoping to add this as an optional online or take-home activity for the students.

Our activities will be combined with homework assignments and descriptions for the teachers. This teaching module is part of our final project for our global engineering course. Amanda and I are excited to continue our external research and learn more about Malta as we get further and further along with our project.

-Vanessa

New (temporary) website is up!

I can’t believe there’s only one more week until we leave for Malta! We’ve done a lot in the past couple of weeks to prepare. Yesterday, the whole Cal Poly team went to practice flying the ROV at the pool. It was great to get more experience setting up the ROV, which I hadn’t done before. I also got to practice driving it around the pool, while other people traded off taking sonar scans and recording the bearing, time, depth, and sketched out the pool based on the scans. Of course, it will be a lot more difficult when we’re in Malta and we can’t see the ROV when it’s in the cistern!

I’ve spent this past few weeks working on the Water Ways website. We are still waiting on the permanent server but for now we are using Omeka’s premium package to host the site temporarily. This means that we have to use one of Omeka’s “themes” for the layout and design of the site, and have extremely limited authority to change it. But, I was able to pick a good theme to match our projects goals. Although we still don’t have everything up, we have a great start.The first step: finalizing the logo! With the input of the rest of the team and months of deciding, I finally settled on this final logo design:

Along the top of the website is the horizontal primary navigation bar. It has pages about the site, about our partners, our research, teaching resources, and a contact page.

About the site: I put information here about the “Water Ways” site, like why we are examining the relationships between water, society, and technology and why these topics help determine the future of the Mediterranean. I also put information about ICEX and the great experience it creates for engineering students to get practice working in a foreign country.

Partners: Here I listed the sponsors: National Science Foundation (NSF) and Collaborative Research Experiences for Undergraduates (CREU), and how their goals coordinate with our program goals.

Research: Right now, I have the research broken up into three groups: Data collection, Interpreting data, and 3D cistern visualizations. Inside data collection users can explore students at work, sites we visit, or the ROV sonar scans. Inside the 3D cistern visualizations, they can explore 5 different cisterns that we have collected data and created visualizations out of. Vanessa took screenshots from different views of her WebGL cistern visualizations to display on the website.

Teaching Resources: still under construction. Vanessa and I are currently working on the first Educational Module that will go here, which will be a two-lesson plan for 7th-8th grade Social Studies classes, incorporating Maltese water conditions in the past, present, and future.

The website is no where near complete, but we have a great start to showcase some of the work we’ve done so far. I’ll be working on it more, and will have a lot to add after I actually visit Malta next week!Here's a screenshot of the homepage, which has featured and recent items posted. 

Check out the website here: icex.omeka.net

-Amanda

We are Live!

I added a few more features to the cistern. I redid the user interface and changed the background color to white. We also hosted it on the web so you can see it here: http://users.csc.calpoly.edu/~zwood/ICEX/Cistern/shading.html

I would appreciate any comments or suggestions you have about the cistern. Since Zoe updated the link I have lowered the water so it looks like this:

I also made it so the camera started zoomed out more. I'm also working on making the lighting better, since right now it moves when you zoom in/out. I'm going to make it constant and find a good location for it!

Amanda and I have also been working on the Water Ways site and we are trying to get this launched as soon as we can. We are hoping we will not have difficulties when merging WebGL with Omeka.

-Vanessa

Texture Coordinates Working

I finally got the texture coordinates working! It was a silly bug but took forever to find since I have never done graphics before, and so I didn't understand the mapping of the texture coordinates until now.

Without water, without shading

Without water, with shading

As you can see, I also added the option to select "show water" or don't show water so that the user can get a better idea of what the cistern looks like.

With shading

With shading

Without shading

Without shading

I am very excited to finally be not looking at weird small squares everywhere, and actually looking at the water textures. I have some goals for the next few weeks but I need to have a meeting with Zoe to determine which are the most important ones.

Goals:

1. Make the water transparent

2. Make the user interface better and prettier (title of Cistern, instructions for how to move cistern, etc)

-Vanessa