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CA Final Year Project used for DCU Summer Camp
(18th August '09)
Mark Gowing's Virtual Maze final year CA project from this year has been used in DCU's Summer
Camp for kids.
The project explored location based gameplay - where the player's physical location
in a room is used as input, a concept developed from the success of Nintendo's Wii and
DS consoles. It consists of a selection of 2D mini games, each one using the players
location in a different way. Visual feedback is provided via a large LCD video wall,
and real-time tracking is achieved through wearable UbiSense tags.
Claire O'Connell of the Irish Times interviewed Mark's project supervisor, Prof Alan
Smeaton, deputy director of Clarity, a Science Foundation Ireland centre that links Dublin
City University, University College Dublin and Tyndall National Institute in Cork.
It's all down to the most simple of sensors, nothing too grand, he explains.
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Tara Andrews (12) one of the participants in DCU's summer camp who have been putting the
new games to the ultimate road test. |
"We do all kinds of complex measurements here on phosphates and water quality and we
look at the pH of sweat - it's all very high end," says Smeaton. "But sometimes the
simplest of sensors can give you applications that you wouldn't have thought of before.
So we started to think about what could we do based on games."
Out of that grew two approaches - one based on sheep-herding where players run around
a virtual "field" steering sheep into a central pen, the other on a dance-mat that
encourages children to jump on the correct answer.
Full story...
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Unique bank loan scheme for computing and engineering graduates - DCU and Bank of Ireland initiative
(14th August '09)
DCU and the Bank of Ireland today announced a unique discounted loan scheme for those recently unemployed who wish to study engineering and computing at postgraduate level at DCU.
The scheme is available for students who wish to enter DCU this September or in March 2010. It is the first of its kind in Ireland and is intended for graduates who have recently been made unemployed and who wish to upskill.
This unique discounted loan can provide up to €15k in funding to cover fees and living expenses. The scheme also allows students defer making any repayment on the loan for 18 months giving them financial freedom to concentrate on their studies.
Applicants must be unemployed, but must not be longer than 12 months out of work. They should meet the university's minimum entry requirements and Bank of Ireland's normal lending criteria and terms and conditions apply.
The School of Computing postgraduate courses available on the scheme are:
Full story and more information: http://www.dcu.ie/news/2009/aug/s0809b.shtml
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CNGL CTYI Courses for Primary School Children
(14th July '09)
From July 13-17, CNGL is
running two combined modules with CTYI; 'Japanese
Language' and 'Culturally Localising Web Pages'. A group of forty students,
aged 8-13 years old, are taking the two modules. Joss Moorkens, a CNGL PhD
student based in DCU, is teaching the language module. Dr. Dimitra
Anastasiou, a CNGL postdoctoral researcher at the University of Limerick
(UL), and Naoto Nishio, a CNGL PhD student at UL, will teach the culturally
localising web pages. The Culturally Localising Web Pages course is
designed to introduce the concept of localisation to the participants by
comparing fun Japanese, English and French web sites. This course highlights
the differences and similarities of contents among those languages and
cultures to explain the importance of localisation. This students will learn
the Katakana character set in Japanese and be able to type them when they
create their own website.
A CNGL PhD student, Robert Smith, ran a "Computers and Animation" course
with the Centre for Talented Youth (CTYI) in DCU. Forty children,
aged 8-13 years old, attended the course last week in DCU (July 6th-July
10th).
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CNGL run Search Engines CTYI Course
(25th June '09)
CNGL is running a three-week Search Engines course with the Centre for Talented
Youth (CTYI - http://www.dcu.ie/ctyi/)
Ten teenagers are attending the course in LG25 in the School of Computing in DCU from
June 22nd - July 10th 2009.
Headed up Dr. Gareth Jones and Dr. Johannes Leveling, the course aims to introduce the
students to the technologies behind current commercial search engines and related natural
language and search technologies, and show students some research systems currently under
development. In doing this, the presenters will introduce the subjects of information retrieval,
machine translation and adaptive hypermedia. Sessions are presented by staff and researchers from
CNGL with assistance from researchers in the Clarity research centre. All the instructors are
active researchers in the areas that they are talking about. Jian Zhang, an INTRA student working
for CNGL Education and Outreach, developed software for the students to use during the course.
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Champagne Breakfast Report
(10th June '09)
The annual School of Computing Champagne Breakfast took place on 28th May in the School of
Computing, and was a great success. Guest speakers at the event included Professor Anne Scott
(Deputy President of DCU), and Dr. Stephen Blott (Head of Computing School).
The speakers welcomed
industry members during the breakfast, and invited them to tour the Final Year project displays in
the labs. The Final Year students had obviously worked hard on their business presentation skills
and there were some truly impressive projects on display. There has been great feedback from students
and industry attendees alike, and we expect several students will hear directly from industry members
over the next few months.
For more information on this event, please contact
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School of Computing Champagne Breakfast
(27th May '09)
The Annual School of Computing Champagne Breakfast will take place this Thursday,
28th May in the Computing Building. The breakfast will take place at 8am, followed by
a tour of the Fourth Year Final Project displays from 9am - 10.30am.
For more information on this event, please contact
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