The idea of the GLOSAS/ROSTER project was that of Dr. Takeshi Utsumi. He suggested the development of a database of the specialists and institutions involved in distance education to provide us with access to the persons, institutions and latest technical solutions in this area.
Under Dr. Utsumi's direction, our lab is developing the CD-ROM and WWW site for GLOSAS/ROSTAt present we have produced an alpha version on the CD-ROM. If our fund raising campaign is successful, we plan to complete the CD-ROM and WWW site by August 1996 -- in time for the Fulbright Conference in Budapest.
Let me describe briefly the CD-ROM version of GLOSAS/ROSTER. The home screen consists of a human head with the globe inside it. The globe is lit in the cities where GLOSAS members live, and they are connected by thin lines. Such an image corresponds well to Dr. Utsumi's model of distance education as a "Global Brain" with the neurons at the cities.
You can rotate the globe and select a geographical location and click on the screen. This leads to the individuals and institutions where another click produces information (text, pictures, video and audio) about their activities in distance education. Each person may present not only multimedia information, but also demo versions of the project he/she develops.
The system provides standard options such as Search (keywords, names of persons and institutions, geographical locations), Print, Notebook, Music On-Off, Help.
On this first screen are the options "General Info" (video greetings from Dr. Utsumi) or "News" (ShareVision, Forum, CU-SeeMe, etc.) or "Search". We see no technical problem converting the system to the Web in the near future.
I hope a CD-ROM and WWW site will help to disseminate information about distance education which can be used for presentations and fund raising campaigns.
Millions of years ago there was a single continent in the Earth named Pangaea. We began promoting the PANGAEA Project in 1994 to help students and children from different countries to know and understand each other using e-mail. The aim of the PANGAEA Project is to unite students from different continents and create a communal information space for them -- sort of an information continent -- where they can exchange multimedia presentations about their families, cities, and every day lives.
This virtual continent will consist of their multimedia presentations made by themselves: true stories about our time written by present day students which will provide them with the possibility of working together on a joint educational project for years to come.
At present, more than 100 contacts via email have been established in the USA, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Japan and European nations.
Trying to think globally but act locally, we began with some definite first steps. Initially students exchanged stories about their families. Then we suggested that American and Canadian students tell us the first three words they connect with Russia. Russian students did the same about the USA and Canada. We got around 300 words. All sides had a lot of fun collecting these words.
Now we are developing a Virtual City which will contain private houses, universities, theaters, museums, leisure centers,etc., from different real cities of the world. The raw materials for each piece of this Virtual City will be prepared by students themselves; they will create their own 3D building using our 3D editor, and they will attach a multimedia presentation to that building. The building will reside on one of the streets of our Virtual City and be open to all cyber visitors.
The user, "walking" along the streets of Virtual City, will have a chance to visit museums and universities from different countries, the private homes of American, Russian or Australian families, and to acquire new friends and say to them, "Hello." They will learn about the cultural traditions of peoples from other countries. It is our hope this will promote world peace.
Virtual City will be organized as a WWW site, and an unlimited number of students from the whole world will have access to it. Where access to the Web is limited, the Virtual City will be delivered to users on CD-ROM.
In our alpha version of Virtual City on CD-ROM you can:
We are now looking for business partners to complete this project. We still have to:
We would expect our partners to cover, in part, the development costs and also to organize setting up a company in the US and other countries.
Our laboratory has already enjoyed success in the development of multimedia applications; we have developed one Laser Disc and four multimedia CD-ROMs.
It is evident that we have both strong and unique experience in Russia in the development of multimedia interactive systems. We use our own authoring system, Borland C or Visual Basic.
Dr. Andrey S. Narvsky,
Chief, Center for Mathematical Modelling,
St. Petersburg Marine Technical University,
3 Lotsmanskaya Street, St. Petersburg, 190008, Russia
email: narvsky@mtu-mic.spb.su
tel: +7-812-157-2544
fax: +7-812-157-2533
Return to GLOSAS News Contents for this issue.
URL: http://library.fortlewis.edu/~instruct/glosas/roster61.htm
March, 1996
GLOSAS NEWS was orinally posted to the WWW at URL: http://library.fortlewis.edu/~instruct/glosas/cont.htm by Tina Evans Greenwood, Library Instruction Coordinator, Fort Lewis College, Durango, Colorado 81301, e-mail: greenwood_t@fortlewis.edu, and last updated May 7, 1999. By her permission the whole Website has been archived here at the University of Tennessee server directory of GLOSAS Chair Dr. Takeshi Utsumi from July 10, 2000 by Steve McCarty in Japan.