Fred Tallbrain had been accepted to Harvard with a Academic scholarship and Syracuse with a basketball scholarship. The former paid his tuition and the second his lodging. As his parents dropped him off at his Syracuse dormitory, his mother worried if they had packed enough batteries. Fred had since kindergarten learnt to use his mobile laptop with wireless connection as the major learning vehicle.
Many had worried that as often foretold, computers would replace people
and in particular teachers and professors. However of course this was not
the case for Fred needed somebody to guide him through the rich information
jungle delivered by the World Wide Web. Now the academic superstars at Harvard
developed and selected the curriculum while his mentor on and off the basketball
for both athletic and acdemic issues was at Syracuse.
Professors used collaboratory technology in their scholarly research where this provided person to person contact in virtual worlds as well as rich access to digital libraries. Java was used both for the video and audio collaborations and also to animate deep concepts shared both between researchers and between teachers and students. Fred still remembered how a Java animation of basic science concepts such as phase transitions and the dynamics of an automobile engine had helped him and a generation of schoolchildren get a deeper understanding of the real world.
The educational environment supported unstructured and structured learning.
Interfaces included old Netscape 5.0 document style as well as a rich variety
of virtual worlds optimized for different types of data. Spatial (3 dimensional
geographical information systems) interfaces were used in virtual field
trips as well interactive journeys. The drop in levelof smoking was attibuted
to the first medical journeys through the lungs and other organs of mistreated
bodies.
The heart of the educational environment was the modern InfoVision system
-- Information, Video, Images and simulation on demand where again virtual
trips through the nether world of video clips were a hallmark of one of
Harvard's best known teacher in public policy. These were scripted to allow
students interacted choices in various situations -- a byproduct of a well
known popular video game format used in "Night Trap" and similar games.