Final Project Step 1: Immersive Libraries and Museums

This is an overview of the article i read on Immersive Education-Libraries and Museums Technology Working Group(LAM.TWG).  To get to this page i found the link in the lecture notes.  http://jied.org

In the overview they summarize how they are coming up with ways to use virtual worlds and other kinds of Immersive Technology to create a virtual Museum/Library.  I think that this article was interesting because it talked about the importance of keeping up to date with technology in the world today.  When students learn it is critical that you need to keep up to date so that they get to learn and access new knowledge everyday.

One of the main goals is to be able to design Libraries and Museums that can be accessed virtually.  This style of learning is fairly new and can be fun for students.  One reason why it can be good is because you do not have to hole yourself up in a book in the library, but you can gain knowledge right in your home or where you desire to learn all in your computer in a virtual world.  It is cool knowing you don's have to make a huge hassle out of where you are most comfortable in learning.

This diagram shows that students from all over can virtually access the same information they might need for more in depth learning.  There are the educators, the students, and then the fake participants who are those who come up with all the information that is put together.  The members of the group are trying to design a museum and a library that have two sides; a client side and a server side.  This would be highly beneficial because the two sides could be added to at any time, by anyone with access to the server side.  This would be really good for them because people could be adding to and editing the museum without having to shut down the link on the clients side.

Many people who like to have peace and quiet while they work and learn could benefit from this virtual Museum/Library.  Even though libraries are supposed to be quiet, flipping of pages and typing could be distracting to many students, but this gives them a new twist to being able to concentrate and learn on their own terms.  The idea that someone could virtually access the same and new information is new and useful to students.   

Virtually viewing museums could be a really cool idea and could pretty much work for everyone.  At some point during this course we talked about field trips and how some schools do not have the money to go on field trips that are required for students to learn.  I think that this program of virtually accessing Museums could help many schools so that they can virtually access all museums and students also get to learn as well.  Reading through this whole article i think that these ideas are pretty awesome and could benefit many schools and students!