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Virtual Classroom

I'm very enthusiastic about the idea of a virtual classroom. Although the term 
"virtual" has lately been applied to fairly low-end, even text-based  systems, 
I would like to point out that given the hardware platforms envisioned for
the project (high-end Silicon Graphics machines) we could present a very high
quality, 3D virtual environment in which the users could move around and
interact comfortably.

This environment could be used not only as a more intuitive interface to the sorts
of internet resources we access now via, say, Mosaic, but also to create virtual
science labs, math manipulatives, etc. The technology is now getting to the point
where it is really possible to create a rich, three-dimensional world containing
objects which behave interactively according to specific rules. By building up
collections of these objects and specifying their rules of behavior, we can
make interactive physics environments, math environments, chemistry labs, etc.
It could even be possible to have simple cartoon-like characters which
could demonstrate how to do things, give verbal explanations to the user and
generally make the environment more friendly to the novice user.

The important issue here, I believe, is to make it possible for the individual
teachers to easily create these worlds themselves as well as interact with them.
So, I would propose the development of an interactive authoring tool for 
construction of these virtual classroom components. Roughly speaking this kind of 
tool would be a 3D, virtual reality analog of Hypercard, allowing the user to not 
only compose the 3D scenes interactively, but to specify their behavior 
interactively as well.

-Russell
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Russell Turner    x3965    turner@cs.umbc.edu    http://www.cs.umbc.edu/~turner
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