A Virtual Museum Where Students Can Learn

Abstract

SEE, Shrine Educational Experience, represents an example of how Internet and multimedia technologies can effectively be exploited to deliver complex scientific and cultural concepts to middle and high school students. SEE (a project by Politecnico di Milano and the Israel Museum, Jerusalem) is based on a shared online 3-D environment, where students from four possibly different countries meet together to learn, discuss and play, visiting the virtual Israel Museum with a guide. The educational experience combines online engagement and cooperation to “traditional” off-line learning activities, spread across six weeks. Data from an extensive two-year-long evaluation of the project, involving over 1,400 participants from Europe and Israel, prove the educational effectiveness of this innovative edutainment format.