β Scribed by Jamshid Beheshti
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
Editor's Summary
As digital natives, the vast majority of teens are used to cellphones, text messaging, social networking sites and other forms of electronic communications and technologies. Though rooted in the digital world for many of their daily activities, teens lack basic information literacy skills for academic tasks and other demands. Specific instruction through the educational system may not be feasible, but it may be possible to build teens' information competence through interactive virtual learning environments. Gameβstyle virtual environments are highly motivating and engaging, providing opportunities for repeated practice and reward for persistence and achieving goals. A virtual reality library, VRLibrary, was constructed, collaboratively designed by young teens and adults, based on the metaphor of a physical library. Teens could wander the virtual space and browse links to ageβappropriate websites presented as virtual books. VRLibrary was very positively received and succeeded at engaging teen users. A librarian avatar could be incorporated to provide help as needed with a user's information seeking.
π SIMILAR VOLUMES
Virtual environments enable a given information space to be traversed in different ways by different individuals, using different routes and navigation tools. However, we urgently need robust user models to enable us to optimize the deployment of such facilities. Research into individual differences
After many years building the foundation of the digital library, information retrieval has emerged from its roots in bibliographic retrieval to establish its role in hypertext and Web applications. We are now in the midst of a "seismic" shift of digital content and context from the global repository
The practical significance of identifying and accommodating individual differences has been established across a number of fields of research. There is a renewed interest in individual differences due to the advances in virtual environments, especially through farreaching technologies such as inform