The Emerging Media Initiative and the Ball State Sponsored Programs Office established the Emerging Media Innovation Grant program to promote knowledge creation, create momentum for future work and pursue potential for commercialization.
The expected outcomes of Emerging Media Innovation Grant projects fall within one or more of these categories:
A. Proposal for significant external funding
B. Proof-of-concept for product/service with commercialization potential
C. Development of significant scholarship around a specific emerging media topic
2010-2011 Emerging Media Innovation Grants
Hybrid Indoor Location-Based Application: Campus Tour
Paul Buis (Computer Science); Vinayak Tanksale (Computer Science)
The researchers will create a location-based application that works indoors. It will be a hybrid of Wi-Fi access point signal strength for coarse-grained location (i.e., floor of a building) and Bluteooth signal strength for fine-grained location (proximity of point-of-interest.) The system will include locating a relatively small number of Bluetooth transmitters near points of interest and writing an iPad application.
Digital Daily Dozen
Dom Caristi (Telecommunications); Robert Yadon (CICS)
The Digital Policy Institute will broaden the distribution of the Digital Daily Dozen (DDD), an e-newsletter about digital issues. With the assignment of a graduate assistant, DDD will secure external funding through advertising to expand content including video and weekly commentary.
Virtual Middletown
James Connolly (Middletown Studies); John Fillwalk (Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts); John Straw (University Libraries)
This project will create a pilot version of a virtual recreation of a Muncie, Indiana factory during the 1920s. The team will use data and evidence compiled from the Middletown Studies to design an interactive, living-history museum-style virtual experience. The larger project, for which the team will seek external funding, will create at least six of these settings to be used as educational and public history venues.
Writing the Wave
Paul Gestwicki (Computer Science); Brian McNely (English)
This team will develop a software system to enhance collaborative knowledge work. Their approach leverages modern theories of rhetoric and writing, human-computer interaction, and the science of learning. This project will result in a prototypical software system, several scholarly publications, and at least one major external grant proposal.
Video Games for Sustainability and Design
Martha Hunt (Landscape Architecture); Christopher Marlow (Landscape Architecture)
The primary goal is to develop the potential of using video games in landscape architectural and environmental design education. The project will include a background study on the potential of games in teaching sustainability concepts in landscape architectural and environmental design education, and the assessment of four video games that address different aspects of sustainability.
Personal Residential Automation Network Kit (PRANK)
Mahesh Senagala (Architecture); Vinayak Tanksale (Computer Science)
PRANK is envisioned as a modular, expandable, scalable, portable, DIY system that allows one’s networks to be accessible from anywhere in your home or wherever you go. The team plans to take this invention through the prototyping process and pursue venture funding via the Ball State Innovation Corporation.
iMedia and Sports Link – Creating a new framework for delivery
Suzy Smith (Telecommunications); Jennifer George Palilonis (Journalism); Michael Hanley (Journalism)
This project will design interactive sports, information and revenue content aimed at specific audiences and developed specifically for various delivery methods, including the iPad.
Growing a Distributed Network for Workshops and Applied Research in Digital Design + Fabrication
Joshua Vermillion (Institute for Digital Fabrication); Kevin Klinger (Institute for Digital Fabrication)
This creative endeavor will create an infrastructure of workshops and course training modules which can be delivered online, along with a network of industry, professional and educational partnerships for applied research. This framework will capture processes and methods of designing and making with emerging media tools to educate an audience of students and professionals.
Interactive C-SPAN
Brandon Waite (Political Science); Vinayak Tanksale (Computer Science)
This project is a continuation of an interdisciplinary course that resulted in the development of an interactive television application designed specifically for political news. This grant will fund additional usability testing to determine the application’s effect on users’ interest in, and knowledge of, the content they are viewing.
An Interactive Geoinformatics Systems for Field Experience Sharing and Collaboration
Yi-Hua Weng (Geological Sciences); Fu-Shing Sun (Computer Science)
This project will develop an interactive geoinformatics web system using Web 2.0 that allows online data sharing and collaboration within geo-community.
2009-2010 Emerging Media Innovation Grants
iInteract: Web 2.0 Real Time Audience Response System (Video)
Todd Meister (University Computing Services); Sharon Van Hove (Nursing)l Linda Sweigart (Nursing)
This project facilitated further development of iInteract, a real-time assessment application currently in the pilot stage of development. This Web 2.0 application leverages equipment the students already own (PDAs, laptops, and internet capable cell phones) rather than requiring the additional purchase of clickers (audience polling devices) for real time assessment.
Digital Chicago Stock Exchange – DiCSX (Video)
Michele Chiuini (Architecture); John Fillwalk (Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts)
The DiCSX (pr. dix) project team created a web-based digital information system (DIS) for the 1894 Chicago Stock Exchange (CSX) by Adler and Sullivan. It consists of three types of digital resources: 1) digital models of surviving ornamental panels obtained with laser scanner technology; 2) digital archives with historic documentation on the panels; 3) a partial digital reconstruction of the CSX visualizing the assembly of the panels. This project is unique in merging architectural digital modeling with diverse forms of digital documentation.
Mobile Devices as Emerging Educational Tools (Video)
Jay Bagga (Computer Science); Vinayak Tanksale (Computer Science)
This team designed and developed three fully functional web-based iPhone educational applications to be used as learning tools for students from a variety of disciplines. The long term goal is to develop an array of educational applications for touchscreen based mobile devices.
Development of a virtual convening space for parenting (Video)
Sheron Fraser-Burgess (Educational Studies); Matthew Stuve (Educational Technology); John Fillwalk (Institute for Digital Intermedia Arts)
This project team developed, tested, and promoted a web portal to support parental engagement in schools and in the education of their children. Assets include digital discussion boards, podcasts and a Second Life space, all designed to provide a collaborative of local agencies with a platform to coordinate services, share resources, and engage parents and teachers in the process.
Broadband based monitoring of food and water related behaviors of the elderly (Video)
Robert Yadon (Center for Information and Communication Sciences); Vinayak Tanksale (Computer Science); Jane Ellery (Fischer Institute for Wellness and Gerontology)
The principal investigators advanced the design and testing of a new system that will remotely monitor intake related behaviors of the elderly who live in Delaware County, Indiana. The wireless system can remotely sense food and water related behaviors of the elderly living in their own homes, from which normative profiles can be established and monitored.
Kindle for courses: Emerging media and the evolving conceptions of text based electronic readers for teaching and learning (Video)
Jon Clausen (Educational Technology)
This study explored how student learners engage course-based texts through the use of the Kindle DX wireless reading device.
LifeWerx: An Immersive Virtual Collaboration Environment (Video)
Wayne Zage (Computer Science); Dolores Zage (Computer Science)
Project LifeWerx advanced a functional 3D virtual collaboration environment to enhance the everyday work experience. The emerging media grant allowed the current version of LifeWerx to migrate to the most recent world engine to continue the research on refining the access controls and desktop application sharing.
Text Messaging: Themes, Traits, and Tendencies (Video)
Thomas Holtgraves (Psychology)
The principal investigator conducted initial investigations of the psychological and linguistic aspects of text messaging. Using actual texts from Ball State students and several personality and demographic measures, the linguistic structure and content of the text messages were analyzed, as well as their relationship to personality and demographic variables.
DN NewsLink Community-Building Project (Video)
Marilyn Weaver (Journalism); John Strauss (Journalism)
This team studied web usage among students to help understand video content selection and develop new video storytelling forms. The information was used to begin a new unified media operation on campus.
Citizen science, citizen sensors: Employing social media in climate science (Video)
Petra Zimmerman (Geography)
The principal investigator explored the potential use of Twitter in climate-focused Citizen Science, providing richer and more finely resolved climate data while students learn climatology. Using inexpensive handheld thermometers/hygrometers and GPS devices, undergraduate students acted as mobile sensors and collected meteorological information (e.g., temperature, relative humidity), using Twitter to “tweet” the information. Mobile tweeted data was compared to time comparable data from two fixed weather sensors.