Fritts, J., Thurber, B., & Bryce-Fritts, M. (2001). Living in virtual Rome: Adventure@Cybercamp. 17th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning.<\/p>\n
This project focuses on life in Ancient Rome. Students adopt characters and interact with their environment, while helping to create that environment. Just powerful. <\/p>\n
Here’s the paragraph that attempts to get at the technology:<\/p>\n
“Living in Rome: Adventure@Cybercamp is the first of a projected series of interactive, web-based books and virtual spaces that contain, support and illustrate activities that have been used by master teachers over the years to help students experience history in a more hands-on way. It has been written with an interactive multi-user virtual space so that students can experience and participate in ancient Roman life in real time.”<\/p>\n
I find a couple things interesting about this description:<\/p>\n
1. The project is a series of interactive “books and virtual space.” Something about the use of the word “book” struck me as odd. Even though I know there are lots of different kinds of media that are considered books from paper to audio to electronic, I still think of books as the things on my shelf. And even the audio and electronic versions mimic that form even if they aren’t corporeal. I suppose these are more like the “choose your adventure” book where you even get to choose which character you’re going to follow. That blurs over into drama, too, like those plays where the audience actually comes up on the stage. So, book seems limiting but I think it helps people understand who might not get “virtual space.”<\/p>\n
2. Experiencing history in a hands-on way: it’s just a great idea. And it is becoming both a real and a virtual experience with more and more groups doing reenactments of historical events. I haven’t installed Age of Empires yet but am interested in seeing how the gamers do it. I’ve heard differing opinions of how much history you learn. In this MUSH\/MUV environment, you create and experience in that time period, allowing a “truer” understanding of history, hopefully by reducing the glare caused by the march of time. And as we learn to interact with history, we learn to interact with our own time more effectively.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fritts, J., Thurber, B., & Bryce-Fritts, M. (2001). Living in virtual Rome: Adventure@Cybercamp. 17th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning. This project focuses on life in Ancient Rome. Students adopt characters and interact with their environment, while helping to create that environment. Just powerful. Here’s the paragraph that attempts \u2026 Continue reading