Planning for next year Workshop – Deep Zoom Composer – more ideas (Post#4)
Whilst planning these blog posts the guys at Expression and Blend team at Microsoft have added some great features to Deep Zoom Composer . The 
application now includes features to add links to images and areas within your deep zoom.
If you have been following this series, I described how to create a Deep zoom composition in a previous post. Unfortunately these new features don’t work when you save them to be used locally. As you need to upload to some web space your deep zoom composition for them to work. This takes using Deep zoom out of the context of a common classroom application somewhat. But, nevertheless this is an exciting development. Details of how to create links and some of the other web features can be found here.
The name synonymous with Deep Zoom is Seadragon, its taken me a bit of time to work out the relationship between it and Deep Zoom. My understanding is that Seadragon is the technology that Deep Zoom uses and is coded using Silverlight. It exists in other ‘flavours’ . These include:- Seadragon Ajax, where you are able to use this technology without the use of silverlight. Seadragon mobile, allows you to view Deep Zoom and Photosynth collections on your iPhone and finally Seadragon.com , this website allows you to create zoom able image from any image URL. Try it for yourself.
There are a number of great web experiences utilising this technology. We have looked at the Hard Rock Cafe Memorabilia site before. Here are a few other examples.
The World Digital Library is a site that makes significant cultural treasures like manuscripts, maps, rare books, musical scores, recordings, films, prints, photographs, and architectural drawings. These are collected and place on a world map where they can be browsed You can also use the timeline at the bottom of the map to scroll forward and backward through the ages to see the different documents available.
Then there is this site that called AppleTree which aims to map out the family tree of the world in order to show you how you’re related to everyone.
You and your students might also be interested in the creator of Seadragon technology ,Blaise Aguera y Arcas, check out this video where you can see him demonstrating Seadragon and another great application in the Seadragon family, Photosynth.
I hope you have enjoyed this series of workshops and have been able to create some ideas around the use of Deep Zoom in the classroom. To give you some inspiration , here is a Deep zoom composition from one of our Innovative Teachers, Ollie Bray, you can find out the background behind this composition on his blog. Click this image to see the Deep Zoom.
