Animations for Visualization of Earth Processes and History

University Of California-Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara CA

Investigators

Abstract

The goals of this project and the goals of my teaching goals are to instill as much understanding as possible of the way the earth works, and also to convey my own love of the beauty, excitement and rigor of the scientific endeavor. In recent years I have experimented with the creation of multi-media visualization products for the understanding and teaching of earth subjects. My initial animations and movies have met with great response, and are used in numerous classrooms at the University of California-Santa Barbara, across the nation and around the world. I believe a major portion of the human population learns best from imagery, especially moving images, and I am very excited about the new multi-media tools that make this form of communication so much more possible. Moving imagery is especially useful and helpful for the teaching of geology, since the subject is so visual and is often far outside ordinary human scales of time and space. I am presently refining regional geological animations and materials for southern California. Through the current project I am expanding the geographic reach of this work by creating an Educational Multimedia Visualization Center for visiting teacher-scholars. The center allows experts in the geology of their own regions/disciplines to bring their traditional images and knowledge, and to transform them into animations and presentation packages. They return home with these products and also with a new array of skills to share around their own institutions. Their imagery products join my works that are already out in film, videotape, as freeware on the web and as materials in the NSF-funded digital libraries of ADEPT and DLESE. Indeed, the ADEPT group is based at U.C.S.B. and is interested in developing a streamlined process for transferring content generated at the Educational Multimedia Visualization Center into their online holdings. The Multimedia Visualization Center is building upon the long experience and excellent infra-structure of this organization, extending its services to off-campus visitors. Thus, visitors return home with their own projects and also with new ideas about instructional support possibilities. Likewise they share with us the innovations of their home institutions that we may learn from them and pass them along.