VLearn 3D - Collaboration: Museums and Other Institutions

	Colleges and Universities
	Schools and Consortia - K-12
	Museums and Other Institutions
	Virtual University and School Prototypes


	Boston Museum of Science SFX in Active Worlds The Boston Science Center has built a virtual world installation as part of their new exhibition, Special Effects. The SFX world in Active Worlds invites the general public to see a virtual companion exhibit similar to the real exhibition in Boston. Exhibit visitors can go into AW through a kiosk at the Museum. AW visitors and museum visitors to SFX world can enjoy the virtual exhibition at the same time and see each other. Web Site: http://www.mos.org/mos/menu/menu.html


	San Jose Tech Museum of Innovation San Jose Tech's Electronic Cafe in Active Worlds Circle of Fire has worked closely with the San Jose Tech museum of Innovation to design the Electronic Café in Active Worlds.The display, scheduled to opening in October 1998 features 12 computer terminals hooked to the intranet. The environments will allow museum users to interact within rich environments designed for gaming and Entertainment applications. See http://www.thetech.org/press_resources/communication.html for an overview of this project. Web Site: http://www.thetech.org/


	NASA Ames Research Laboratory NasaNa_ NASA's public virtual version of the Ames Research Laboratory in Active Worlds features many opportunities and activities for students online and in 3D, including live outreach for groups of students to meet experts in a Pathfinder course module and an exhibition linked to many pages within the NASA Ames Research Lab's Home Site. Web Site: http://www.arc.nasa.gov/


	Active Worlds Moon in AWedu This world, designed by Activeworlds.com, Inc. in 1997, was terraformed based upon an authentic photograph of the moon. It can be used as a location for field trips and links to more information about Apollo 11 Mission, NASA for Kids, the Discovery Channel's Moon Walk site and others. Contact: info@activeworlds.com


	United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization Virtualia in Active Worlds Virtualia is an experiment in fractal-like surfaces and automated building, built by Lucio Pascarelli, who is now designing a similar world for the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. This world is an experiment to find ways to generate 3D surfaces from data for educational purposes. Contact:: lucio@pascarelli.com Web Site: http://www.virtualia.net/

	LifeLearn, A Bioregional Learning Center of the N. California Coast BioLearn in Active Worlds and AWedu The BioLearn World is a work-in-progress. It is a companion to LifeLearn, a Bioregional learning center of the North California Coast. The development of this world will include the prototyping of natural, dynamic and efficient navigation of information about the bioregion, biodiversity, and environmental stewardship in the context of the larger biosphere. Through innovative navigation, narrative and automation, this world will ultimately feature galleries and libraries with non-linear fly-through sequences of information visualization and concepts that engage the senses and take advantage of the geospatial referents of a natural 3d environment. Through excellent design and inspiring cross-fertilization of ideas linked to the natural world, BioLearn hopes to become an collaborative, global environment where children and adults can become awe-inspired as they understand large amounts of decentralized, dynamic information in a natural and beautiful virtual setting. BioLearn features a kelp forest, beach area and cliff range where all lifeforms and objects are linked to web-based information. Two galleries, the Global Simulation Center and the Lifeform/Cyberlife Gallery offer portals to high-quality information from all over the world. They celebrate biodiversity, encourage sterwardship of the local and global environment and acknowledge the burgeoning new field of artificial life artificial life where biologically inspired organisms are developed and generated by genetic algorithms, dynamical systems, complexity, evolution, and physics. Through the BioLearn virtual world, LifeLearn hopes to offer a way for students around the world to explore the realms of "organic cyberspace." The original BioLearn project team is Greg Steltenpohl, Bonnie DeVarco, Penny and Craig Twining, Henrik Gudbrandsen and Anita Roy Dobbs. Contact: Greg Steltenpohl Gregstel@aol.com Bonnie Devarco devarco@cruzio.com

	Struck Geometry -Beautiful Code (California, Netherlands, Canada) AWStruck in AWedu Struck is the brainchild of Gerald de Jong. Inspired in part by the floating compression sculptures of artist Ken Snelson, Gerald defined a new area of exploration: elastic interval geometry (EIG). He was quickly joined by a community of "power users" ready to provide valuable feedback and show off their creative powers. Check out Karl Erickson's Struck Community website for a showcase of the many exciting results already achieved-with a promise of much more to come. AWStruck opens the field even further. Struck users have populated this world with conversation pieces designed to inspire and instruct. Students with no previous training will have an easy on-ramp into the world of spatial geometry. In AWStruck they'll find knowledgeable citizens mingling with tourists, willing to share insights and ideas. They'll discover a rich assortment of links to other worlds and websites (including to the Java source code of Struck itself), all designed to expand their horizons and entertain at the same time. AWStruck takes geometry students to a new frontier of exploration in a hurry, and thereby motivates them to reconnect to material they may have given up on earlier in their careers. Contact: Alan Ferguson aferg@home.com http://www.beautifulcode.nl