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By Sarah Coomber The Forum - 09/14/2000 When Brian Slator logs onto his computer at North Dakota State University, he enters worlds most people would never dream of. In one, he steers a submarine through a bright blue plant cell and points out landmarks like the Golgi apparatus. In another, he visits Planet Oit, where he buys tools from a zany-looking creature named Crazy Eddy. Although it might sound like Slator is whiling away his time on computer games, the associate professor in computer science is actually demonstrating tools that teach students cell biology and geology. The National Science Foundation announced Wednesday that it has awarded $1.9 million to Slator and a multidisciplinary team of NDSU researchers to help them create more virtual worlds over the next five years. “This is a big deal – a little hard to overestimate it,” said Philip Boudjouk, NDSU vice president of research, creative activities and technology transfer. The project is among 210 selected from 1,400 proposals to receive the first wave of awards under the NSF’s Information Technology Research initiative. “What it represents is recognition on the part of the National Science Foundation that NDSU can take leadership in this area,” Boudjouk said. “This is really a kind of knighting, if you will.” The recognition comes three years after the NDSU researchers, called the World Wide Web Instructional Committee, began working on the project. Their computer activities challenge students with assignments for which they use virtual tools to determine the names of different cell parts or minerals present in a certain mountain. One assignment in the Virtual Cell program requires finding the Golgi apparatus, a part of the cell that collects and secretes proteins. After moving his submarine through the cell, Slator stopped and selected a tool: glycosyl transferase. He learned earlier in the program that this enzyme marks the Golgi. He clicked on a couple of cell parts, but found their glycosyl transferase levels were only 1 and 18. Then he clicked on a blue stack and got a reading of 98. He identified that part as the Golgi, and the program checked it off his list of items to find. As he worked on the assignment, another submarine lurked nearby. When two or more people are logged into the program, they appear as submarines on each other’s monitors and can send messages to one another. “We want to make them gamelike,” Slator said. “We want to get the youth of America to understand science, but we’re competing with MTV, too.” The NSF grant will help the researchers develop more virtual educational worlds, find ways to assess student learning and develop software tools so people can create their own scenarios. “I’d like to see a day where high school teachers could create their own simulators based on their curriculum,” Slator said. Other worlds the group has started include Dollar Bay, a city where economics students take on the persona of a retailer; Blackwood, a Western town where history students study life in the 19th century; and a museum of computer science. Slator said visitors from as far away as Spain, Italy and Greece have visited the Web site (www.ndsu.edu/wwwic/) and participated in what he calls “immersive virtual worlds.” The group has worked through some lean times, Slator said, and he said it is gratifying and humbling to receive a nearly $2 million grant. “You float 6 inches off the ground,” he said. |
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