Digital Workshop

Yesterday I was at a children's museum and they had an exhibit where you "traveled" to a different country. Towards the end of the exhibit, they had two kiosks set up so that kids could record themselves and tell about their trip and then email it.

It was very cool. First they had a webcam set up in the kiosk. It would take a picture of the individual. Then they also had a microphone set up in the kiosk to record audio. Everything was dead simple with large buttons that allowed you to re-take both pictures and re-record audio. You could also select different areas of the exhibit you wished to talk about. Once you had everything you completed, it then gave you a virtual keyboard on the screen to address your e-mail, and then allowed you to e-mail what you created to an email address. The program generated an email with a link via PHP. The link remains active for two weeks and then is deleted.

I cannot tell you how cool this was and wondered what whomever created this did it in, but suffice it say, I think some enterprising individual could do it in Opus.

Just thought it might get peoples' creative juices flowing.

Between the multimedia programs and the advances in flat touch screen technology, you see some great interactivity appearing in what is normally quite static / passive activities.

I saw a local art gallery that had A4ish screens next to various paintings that prompted responses from the audience including have them identify aspects of the painting on the digital copy and allowing them to make changes and see how certain effects were built up by the artist.

We (Interaktiv) have created several multimedia activities that various museums and the like use to engage the audience - normally school groups, but I think the adults get as much out of it as well

With touch screens / IWB available to them or their audience, people are slowly coming to realise what can be achieved - and it needn't be complicated. In the right hands, Opus is an amazing tool and DW have included several features in recent years that will help keep it that way, including multi-monitor and DLL support. Both of which would help you design programs such as those that you mention.

IMHO, we need to see a little more on the recording front from Opus, even basic sound recording and image saving, both of which we currently have to do via a third party DLL. But there are programs creeping into the arena that offer some bespoke (sorry USA) extras such as the ability to include a flash export. By which I mean from the published publication not Opus. I've seen young students use this to create simple animated story books which their teachers can then quickly upload to the school's website.

Mack