From: bluefire@well.sf.ca.us (Bob Jacobson)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: EVENT: Canadian National Film Board VR Demo, Toronto, Oct 13, 1992
Date: 29 Sep 92 06:47:11 GMT
Organization: WORLDESIGN, Seattle
Originator: hlab@milton.u.washington.edu



Crossposted from the WELL (192.132.30.2)   vr   conference


Topic  92:  Networked VR:  Events, Ideas, and Applications
# 27: Susan Wyshynski (catinhat)      Sun, Sep 27, '92  (15:11)      64 lines
 
 
 Global Educators to View National Film Board Virtual Reality
 Demonstration.
 
 On October 13 educators on six continents will meet in a satellite domed
 lecture hall to debate education in the 21st Century, finalize plans for a
 global electronic university and watch as children in Canada, the US. and
 Italy use "virtual reality" to show them the kinds of cities they would like
 to live in and launch the National Film Board of Canada's Urban Update
 regional discovery project.
 
 The Urban Updates Virtual Reality program, produced by the National Film
 Board of Canada in collaboration with the Toronto based Vivid Group's
 Mandala(R) Virtual World Technology and Telesat Canada will be the
 highlight of the International Conference on Educational Media
 Symposium ICEM, to be held October 12 and 13 at the University of
 Central Florida in Orlando.
 
 Canada's revolutionary Olympus satellite along with Vivid's Mandala(R)
 VR System will extend the walls of the "Global Lecture Hall" GLH to
 include planners and educators in the new republics in the former Soviet
 Union for the first time, providing the two-way trans-Atlantic linkages
 between the children who will be located at the University of Lecce in Italy,
 the electronic classroom at the University of Central Florida in Orlando and
 the studios of Telesat Canada in Ottawa.
 
 The program will reinforce the ICEM conference theme "Design and
 Delivery of a 21st Century Technology Base for Today's Learner's:
 International Implications. Transmitted via OMSAT, INTELSAT and other
 international satellite networks it will be watched by educators from Japan
 to Singapore, Europe, Alaska and Australia to Argentina and Azerbaijan.
 
 Dr. Takeshi Utsumi, President of Global University in the USA, who is
 organizing the GLH satellite distribution of the conference throughout the
 world said "the objective is to promote awareness of the possibilities of
 international electronic exchange of education services using inexpensive
 telecommunications media, to present ongoing programs and to discover
 any technical, regulatory, economic, and marketing hindrances to the
 creation of a Global University."
  
 "By using interactive communication technology to permit the children to
 reverse the usual roles of pupils and teachers in order to show the world
 the kinds of cities they would like to live in in the next century we are
 painting a human face on electronic communication technology and
 showing how it should be used," and NFB spokesperson said.
 
 "When you realize that 80% of the world's population will be living in cities
 by the turn of the century you will understand why programs like this are
 needed," said Julie Stanfel, the NFB Producer of the Urban Updates
 program. "This project is designed to establish networked groups of young
 people in a number of countries to investigate issues of urbanization and
 provide them with opportunities to work together to design the cities in
 which they want to live." she said.
 
 Urban Updates is designed to help children and teachers to exchange
 ideas and educational multimedia programs -- but it's much more than that
 according to those involved. "It's a place where children and teachers all
 over the world can come together in a virtual space to design and build
 communities for the 21st Century using the Mandala(R) technology, state
 of the art multimedia hardware, software and databases -- linked with