Have you ever played a game called "Wolfestein 3-D" or "Buck Rogers". Both of these games were huge when they came out. They helped break the mold from linear approached video games and added the third dimension. Nintendo came out with a consul unit called "Virtual Boy". A lot of people never heard of this unit. It was only around for a bit. It was a unit that had a pair of goggles on a tripod and a normal hand controller with it. An example of one game was 3-d tennis. It gave people really bad headaches. This was not a high resolution unit at the time but the illusion was there in a way. Peoples minds were not subject to this type of graphic as they are now of days.
Funny, you tell students about the development of this unit...1-75 might know about it because they are really cool! Ha Ha. but the rest would not get the significance. Why...they have 3-D video tvs, 3-D movie theaters, and tools like Google Earth and Sketch-up. The idea of an image without the third dimension is considered old school to them. They grew up with images that pushed the limits of the third dimension. When I saw "Finding Nemo" for the first time, I was floored at what pixar did. The resolution was so high. The way characters zoomed around the screen was incredible! Students grew up watching that movie thousands of times screaming in the back seat of a car eating cherrios! No joke...I ask my class all the time!
I have trouble navigating the third dimension. Newer games like "Call of Duty", "Halo", "Warcraft", etc all give me a headache! So what are the positive possibilities I see with something that give me a headache? Tools that demonstrate a concept that is not fully understood by students.
Students can navigate the third dimension but can they create in the third dimension. Drawing on paper and using mixed media to build an object are two very difficult things for a student to do in middle school.....a lot have trouble and become very frustrated easily. Part of my job is to help foster the understanding of the the third dimension when creating individual expressions of art. In order to innovate like an engineer for example, students must understand space and how an object takes up space while interacting with other objects in that space. These concepts carry over into all subjects and even in state testing criteria.
And now for the Google part of this blog entry. If you take tools that use the technology like video games, you can have students explore the third dimension in activities that can be controlled. Design and Technology teachers use Sketch-up and Google Maps/Earth to help demonstrate to all learners these fundamental concepts older individuals take for granted exist. You might think get what 3-d is fully but if you ask them to create using the third dimension, you will quickly understand there is a difference between knowing and doing!
The largest wow factor you can get is showing Sketch-up for the first time. Draw a circle (2-D) object...next you grab and pull the circle up. Instantly you make the 2-d object into a 3-d object.... circle into a cylinder. That wow factor is simply students' minds just figuring out the real difference between 2 and 3 dimensional objects. The hook is placed 9/10 times using that trick. Without these tools, students might not make that connection.
From there in both Google Maps, Earth, and Sketch-up, there are endless number of activities that bring these programs together. There are plenty of self driven tutorials on line for independent learning. Group collaboration is very difficult but it can be done. I had students create a "Bottle Drive Bin". Jobs were divided. One student was the project manager, another was the architect, another was the lead foreman, another was the business manager, etc....the whole project was created using real life skills. The bin was presented, approved, and built. Google Sketch-up, Earth, and May played an important role in that project. It is all how you choose to use the tools out there to get the message across.
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