Friday, February 22, 2013

What is an educational CAVE?

Do you know what a CAVE is?

The experts say, "It is the next-generation large-scale virtual-reality environment. It is a hybrid system that combines the benefits of both scalable-resolution display walls and virtual-reality systems to create a seamless 2D/3D environment that supports both information-rich analysis as well as virtual-reality simulation exploration at a resolution matching human visual acuity." But then who understands the experts? 

Here is what it seems to me to be.

The CAVE is not where bats live, but where the future of education is going, albeit a few years out. It is a 3-D technology that allows a person to wear a pair of special 3-D glasses and then explore something, e.g. the human brain as if you were inside the brain. CAVE is working now and it enables a researcher to explore blood vessels in the brain as if the person were really there.

My take on the whole CAVE thing is not so much the explore capabilities, which are phenomenal, but the by-product of the actual experience which will dramatically expand educational opportunities. I never understood molecular structure in college. Even the water molecule was a mystery to me. I could not touch it, move it or understand the molecular bonds, often represented by tiny little bi-directional arrows, that held this magical liquid, called water, together. With Cave, I can explore a water molecule from the inside out.

Since people learn by so many different senses, CAVE is a new way to aggregate more senses into the learning experience.

Take a look see. http://www.evl.uic.edu/core.php?mod=4&type=1&indi=424




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