“Education Delivered Through Storytelling: Using Virtual Reality as an Educational Tool” by Kesler

This use of virtual reality for delivery of education through a storytelling motif is presented by a collaborative group of educators. The project environment allows children to interact directly with a 28-foot curved virtual reality world, which at scheduled times is a huge interactive computer screen offering educational vignettes, and other times runs in demonstration mode. The choices being considered for availability to the students using the VR motif range among the following educational programs utilizing the Panoram Technologies image stitching and projection system:

• A visit to the North Carolina Outer Banks, sounds and estuaries, with information on the troubled water situation that threatens the wildlife nursery.
• A visit to the Civil War vessel SS Monitor, sunk off the North Carolina coast.
• A visit to the pirate ship Queen Ann’s Revenge.
• A visit to a museum without walls housing the largest collection of African art outside the Smithsonian Institution.
• A visit to the history of North Carolina pottery.
• The folklore of Lapland.
• A wild ride on a snowmobile through the great northern woods of Lapland.
• A history of the Cold War and pursuit of the elimination of nuclear weapons, featuring past SIGGRAPH Computer Animation Festival works (“Nuke the Duke” and “Wag the Flag,” for example).
• A story about the plight of endangered species in “Save the Animals.”
• Health education

Diana M. Henshaw
Mike Dorsey
Alissa Chapman
David C. Balch
East Carolina University

Jeff Taylor
University of Lapland

Tom DeFanti
Dan Sandin
University of Illinois at Chicago