London, ENGLAND (7/10/98)- The developers of a new 'virtual
frog' hope that their digital creature will help to enhance the instruction
of biological and physical sciences by making full use of emerging information
technologies.
The new frog requires no scalpels, probes or noxious gases, just a desk-top
computer. The three-dimensional simulation could be a valuable tool in
the teaching of basic anatomy and physiology, say the creators of the virtual
creature.
The frog can be rotated and viewed from any angle. Starting at the surface,
a click of the mouse turns the skin transparent. With another click, the
user can zoom through the skin to view the muscles, or peel the muscles
back to expose the internal organs and skeleton.
The digital frog is part of a project called Virtual Creatures. This
project is part of a group called SUMMIT (Stanford University Medical
Media and Information Technologies Group). SUMMIT was founded eight years
ago to create computer-based teaching tools for the Stanford University
School of Medicine and has expanded to provide educational multimedia for
medical students and doctors. The virtual frog is aimed at middle school
and high school students
"We are visual creatures," said Ramani Pichumani, a research investigator
for the project. "The goal of the project is to take advantage of our visual
nature. We learn better when we are visually engaged."
To do that, the Virtual Creatures team created a virtual environment,
a three-dimensional, computer-generated setting for students to wander
through and explore. Scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory,
in Berkeley, Calif., gathered the data for the three-dimensional model
of the frog by slicing a frozen real frog into very thin slices and digitizing
images of the slices.
Besides viewing and manipulating the three-dimensional frog, students
can call up photos of frogs in their natural habitats and consult virtual
texts for thorough explanations.
"The next big leaps in education will come in virtual environments,"
said Parvati Dev, SUMMIT's director and principal investigator for Virtual
Creatures.
While computer games like "Myst" and "Doom" generate simple virtual
environments, the Virtual Creatures team exploited more powerful technology
to create a richer environment -- called Frog Island -- with numerous opportunities
for interactive learning.
After being greeted by a ranger who explains how to get around the island,
students can visit, in any order, a series of huts, each focusing on a
different aspect of frog biology: muscles, organ systems, bones, nerves,
habitat and so on.
"With a virtual reality model, you don't have to worry about real-life
constraints," said Pichumani.
For instance, in contrast to a real frog, the virtual frog can be taken
apart in any sequence -- say, starting with the digestive system -- and
then put back together again.
Virtual Creatures requires lots of processing power and runs best on
high-end graphics workstations, Pichumani said. But the speed of innovation
in the computer industry should soon make the necessary technology affordable
for many schools, he said. The team is also looking at ways to transfer
most of the processing work to a central computer, which students and teachers
could access by logging on from a cheaper computer.
The new program was introduced at the "Virtual Reality in Education
and Training" conference (VRET '98) in London, England.
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