Application of Virtual Reality Internet-Based Multimedia

Recent advances in communications, networking, and computer technology have delivered capabilities to today's classroom computers that overwhelm what was considered possible only a few years ago. Advances in desktop virtual reality, real time rendering, and worldwide web Internet linked computers have created an explosion of new computer-based learning opportunities. With the advent of the Internet coupled with the recent explosion in desktop interactive visualization capabilities, the ways in which information is transmitted, and the ways in which people interact, and receive information, are also changing. During Phase I, we will explore how these new modes of processing information can be accounted for in the educational process to better prepare students for the technological challenges outside the classroom, and to more effectively educate students inside the classroom. We will integrate multimedia, Virtual Reality (VR), and Internet-based learning technologies into a common framework for classroom instruction, develop sample computer activities that meet the national educational reform standards, and apply industry accepted curriculum assessment methodologies as the computer-based technologies are field tested in the classroom. The student activities will reflect a constructivist approach in which knowledge is actively constructed by the cognizing subject, not passively received from the environment, i.e. students actively construct inferences, relations, comparisons, questions, mental models, and the like. We will use an architecture that integrates distributed Internet content within a single learning package that combines the richness of local hosted content (i.e. 3D, virtual reality, multimedia, multiplayer) with remote distributed content that is maintained by educators around the country in their special fields of interest.