Title : Active Learning in a Digital Dome with the Living Forest

The Living Forest is an interactive virtual environment developed for large-screen formats, especially the all-digital portable dome theaters. Our portable Discovery Dome travels to K-12 schools and other settings to host teacher-led learning activities for audiences of up to 30 students. The Living Forest provides a compelling virtual representation of a functioning ecology over 100 years of forest growth. Students and/or the teacher use a standard game controller to navigate, step the forest through its growth stages, and change season. Significantly, participants use simulated measuring tools to gather information about trees and other features much as a forester would in real life. The Living Forest also works on a standard desktop, web-delivered, so that students can go home and continue to work with it. We developed the forest as part of a 3year “My Dome” project funded by the National Science Foundation and dedicated to interactive learning in digital dome theaters that engages young people in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math topics. Preliminary evaluations show that the Living Forest is effective for teaching environmental science in the classroom and in informal settings including scout troop activities and in the museum. For more information see http://publicvr.org/html/pro_forest.html. Summary: The Living Forest is an interactive virtual environment for digital dome theaters that supports active learning of STEM topics such as forest ecology in the environmental and sustainability sciences. Introduction: Digital technologies have transformed the traditional planetarium dome experience from a star field and pointer presentation to movies covering the entire hemispherical screen. Compared to a small screen format (e.g., television), immersing the audience in the material has important educational advantages primarily around the feeling of presence in the virtual environment [1]. Perhaps more importantly, a dome or other immersive display can provide an “egocentric” or inside view of some phenomena or objects. Depending on the topic, the visual design can reveal information that is not obvious or accessible on a flat screen [2-3]. Advances in computing, storage, and output have led to improvements in resolution and brightness of the full-color, full-texture 3D moving image, and most importantly, in real-time interaction [4]. Many programs available for digital domes are passive experiences, but now it is possible to give the audience real-time interaction with virtual worlds, objects, and characters. Taking advantage of these new technologies, the partners in the MyDome project have developed a series of interactive learning experiences for the portable dome environment. These