The staff and teachers already knew us from our previous work with a temporary ImmersaDesk setup the year before. During the fall we met with the local Parent-Teacher Organization and the school district's technology council to show them the ImmersaDesk, discuss what we were hoping to achieve, and answer any questions that they had. We also used this time to distribute permission slips to all of the parents, and to talk to interested teachers about developing several initial QuickWorlds. In the spring we began regular hours at the school, with personnel on-site every Friday so any interested teacher could make use of the VR facilities. QuickWorlds The QuickWorlds program is intended to provide a fast turnaround mechanism for teachers who would like to make virtual models available to their students as part of the regular learning program.
Educational materials abound with visualizations for good reasons.
A visual representation provides simultaneous and parallel access to multiple parts or components of the visualized system, while a text necessarily presents them in some sequence, leaving the learner with the task of integration. A dynamic visualization demonstrates how components of a system change over time and interact. A visualization can convert abstractions into perceivable objects and engage perception in support of conceptual learning. Interactive visualizations allow a learner to manipulate a system, and draws upon the near-universal principle that knowledge is constructed in the course of activity. High-end visualizations combine all of these features to let the learner feel as if he or she is directly experiencing the visualized system, thus drawing upon children's natural capacity for experiential learning.