Nov 20 2007
Visualize this! A visit to C.V.V.E. at the University of Kentucky
Two weeks ago I took a trip with some of my producer colleagues at KET to the University of Kentucky’s Center for Visualization and Virtual Environments (C.V.V.E.) We had received an invitation for a tour some weeks earlier and besides feeling curious about what we might see–none of us really knew what to expect!– we were hoping that the visit might spark our imagination and help us come up with some creative ideas for the video instruction we are set to produce next year. That it did!
As we were guided from room to room, grad students received us and introduced the projects that were being carried out. In the first room, ironically, the focus was not on visual but on audio research. There, we were shown how tiny microphones and speakers can be distributed at various points and synchronized in a way that allows a computer to locate and distinguish voices from within a group. This capability could transform any environment into a “smart” space which could detect and interact with individual visitors simultaneously. The technology opens up all kinds of possibilities: spoken commands from anywhere in the room could direct a computer to call up documents and files to a large screen, a “voice guide” could accompany and direct a person on a tour through a building, or a person could allow his voice to be amplified as he walked through the room but without the hassle of wearing a dedicated microphone.
The different stations of the tour were similar in that each featured an application of technology which in the near future might significantly change the way people interact with information and each other. Tele-immersion research being conducted at CVVE for example involves developing practical methods of transmitting images and environments to displays so that they are “view-dependent.” As the viewer looks at the screen from different directions, the image and light change to create a 3-D, immersive effect: objects, people, and backgrounds seem to be really there. Such a technology will take tele-conferencing to a whole new level. Board members might attend a meeting in which they are seated right across the table from one another, at least apparently so. In reality however they are sitting not only in different board rooms but in different countries as well, separated by thousands of miles. Because tele-immersion can re-create a sense of proximity and presence which we experience in real life, it will have many ramifications for distance learning as well. As we’ve mentioned before on these pages, one essential tactic for increasing achievement in K12 distance learning is removing the “distance.” Tele-immersion provides a way to make that possible.
There were many other cutting-edge projects which we were able to see in action. Research in 3D Face Recognition, 3D Data Acquisition, and the REVEAL project which will allow surgeons to train for and conduct surgeries in a much more efficient and sophisticated manner.
While touring the center, one can not help but notice how the visualization research going on there applies to such a wide range of disciplines: medicine, commerce, government, defense, and…. education.
I’ve been hopeful and excited about the potential of virtual environments in education –especially for language learning and cultural exchange– ever since I first started delving into Second Life at the beginning of this year. Toward the end of our tour at CVVE we were provided with a concrete example (on video) of how life-size, immersive visualization can work for learning. Researchers there had created an environment using a gaming metaphor: a student– equipped with only an armchair to sit in and a remote to direct his motion–took part in an Indiana Jones-type quest through a cavernous maze of tunnels and secret passages to locate and help decipher an ancient Greek tablet. As the student “walked” through the maze, he heard the voices of two guides who gave him advice on how to proceed and what to look out for– but all of the decision making was left up to him. Once he finally found the tablet, he was able to use his remote to pick it up, spin it around, and view it from all angles. As the doctoral student working on the project pointed out, such a close-up examination would be impossible in the museum where the actual artifact is on display: the piece is housed behind glass and cannot be touched (nor lifted up! It weighs more than a ton, I’m sure. 
) But how did she create such a realistic 3-D image of this massive relic? She confided to us that is was actually very easy: she simply located a 2D image of the piece on the web and downloaded it. No labor-intensive rendering involved! Again, we see ways of removing the distance out of the equation and allowing students to interact with content up close.
Before leaving one my colleagues made the observation that while the ideas there at the center were all very futuristic, the technology was not. Indeed, most of the projects made use of the most standard equipment, all of it very economical and run-of-the-mill. We were expecting supercomputers but found mostly low cost cameras and gear that seemed thrown together in an ad hoc fashion.
That realization alone made quite an impact on my thinking over the next days. I thought about how although for immediate, practical purposes we aren’t quite there yet with all the exciting new capabilities of visualization technology and virtual immersion, we are very close indeed. In the meantime I too want to make use of the tools at hand (in the spirit of the people at the CVVE!) but for our program the focus will be primarily on creating environments for language learning in which students can experience content first hand.