For those who missed it, this past Saturday, April 14th, was Accepted Students Day at Bentley. As always, the CIS Sandbox was open and ready to greet the new prospective students. We saw some very enthusiastic students and parents, who had many questions about the CIS Major/Minor, and the Sandbox itself. Our tutors were eager to share their own experiences as CIS students at Bentley.
We were also excited about our new and improved Beacons project. Beacons are Bluetooth Low Energy devices that broadcast their unique identifiers to other nearby devices. For our project, we used this technology, in conjunction with the Phy browser, to send push notifications to people’s phones who were on campus for Accepted Students Day. Depending on a person’s location on campus, he/she would receive a notification with a link that would navigate to a web page that had information about that specific campus location. Our Sandbox tutors coded the web pages as well.
Prospective students were also delighted to learn that they could try out our Oculus Rift for a virtual reality experience. Students could put on the headset and be immersed in a three dimensional canvas. The TiltBrush application allows users to create their own artistic creations in virtual reality.
Lastly, we had our OhBot on display. If you’ve been to the CIS Sandbox this year, you’ve probably encountered the OhBot, as he is programmed to say your name out loud when you swipe into the Sandbox. For Accepted Students Day, we disconnected that feature, and instead, had him doing mathematical calculations.
Overall, it was a successful Accepted Students Day, and we cannot wait to have new CIS students in the fall!
