The Effects of Two-Dimensional Stimuli and Three-Dimensional Stereoptic Stimuli on Spatial Representation in Drawings

Today's students have never known a world without desktop computers, so it is not surprising that they embrace the interactivity, connectivity, and media integration that technology so easily supports. Visual media in particular has become increasingly important in their lives. Devices such as digital cameras, digital camcorders, and even cell phones have provided new ways for students to produce and consume visual media. In fact, approximately 40% of teens own cell phones, and 24% own a digital camera (Brass, 2003). Many cell phones have integrated digital cameras to enable users to snap and send photographs immediately. They also allow the user to add photographs to an integrated address book so that a visual image of the caller appears when the phone rings.Advances in visual media are not limited to two-dimensional imagery, however. These same devices also support three-dimensional graphics and games. Sharp, a company that has been selling cell phones with 3-D displays for more than a year, recently announced that it will manufacture the world's first 3-D laptop. The laptop display will "produce 3-D images by sending slightly different images to the right eye and the left eye at once by bending them in different angles" (Dean, 2003). With the push of a button, the display will switch to a familiar laptop display.The video game industry also has a major influence on students' lives, representing a market share of approximately $10 billion in 2002 (Foreman, 2003). It continues to drive innovation and development in interactive technologies, including the visually dynamic immersive environments routinely used in computer-based games.The greatest recent changes in visual technologies, and arguably the most promising educational enhancements, however, are the emergence of three-dimensional imagery and immersive environments. "There is a general consensus among educators that learning by experience, real or virtual, remains the most effective way to acquire knowledge" (Roman, 1994, pp. 224-227). Hedberg and Alexander (1994) assert that virtual reality offers great possibility in allowing learners to become active participants in a "community of practice." They suggest that as learners progress to full participation in such a community, understanding will increase and the transfer of concepts to new contexts should be easier.Learning in virtual environments presents other advantages. Possible uses of virtual reality include, but are not limited to, participation in historical events, learning languages through immersion into a foreign country, creating alternate worlds, exploring planets and other inaccessible places, and creating and manipulating abstract conceptual representations. Chris Dede predicts that learning environments of the future will be not unlike the shared graphical environments found in multiuser Internet games popular today (Interactive Media in Education: An interview with Chris Dede, 2002).Previously, supercomputers were required to generate the rich, sophisticated three-dimensional imagery that can be accomplished now on even the most basic desktop computer. As computer processing power and bandwidth increase, applications such as tele-immersion will enable learners to be immersed, not in a virtual environment, but in a remote physical environment augmented by virtual components (Daniilidis & Bajcsy, 2002). To imagine the potential learning benefits of such an environment one only needs to consider the following statement by Larry Smarr, Director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (as cited m Bylinsky, 1991):The eye-brain system is incredibly advanced. Looking at the world, we absorb the equivalent of a billion bits of information per second, as much as the text in 1,000 copies of a magazine. But our mental 'text computer' is limited by the fact that we can read only about 100 bites-or characters per second (p. 142).Bransford, Brown, and Cocking (2000) state "technology-based tools can enhance student performance when they are integrated into the curriculum and used in accordance with knowledge about learning" (p. …