The use of 3D interfaces can improve the educational experience by allowing people to gain access to greater amounts of information, quicker and in a more intuitive way. Meadows explains, “Think of it this way: if I go into the library to look for a book, rather than look through the card catalog for the book title, I might actually go and ask the librarian where the book might be located. That kind of interaction traditionally involves a human, so the metaphoric equivalent to this kind of interface amounts to asking a program that appears to be a person for the same information. We ask a program (called Google) where something that we're looking for is, but this is like looking through a card catalog. For the past five years I've been working on changing that interface.”

This is a very new area. It's only become cost-effective for public schools in the last six to eight years to have graphics and animation software in the classroom. Now that the technology is available it's a case of figuring out how to use this graphic education area to link science and technology together. Few people are studying it. Scientific visualization has been used for years, but mostly in programming and logarithms. Dr. Clark explains, “This is application orientated. You can actually take this into grades lower than college or grad school. We are actually polishing these materials with eighth graders and a few seventh graders.” Dr. Petlick adds, “We do know that there is a need for [this type of education]. There is some research from the early `90s that indicated that students who come to college, especially if they're going to major in engineering, need sufficient visualization skills. That's a key part of why educators are trying to improve visualization skills by teaching it in the high schools and middle schools.” To provide students with a good fundamental background to communicate symbolically, it's important to begin this training as early as possible. Dr. Clark concludes, “ It's too early in these initiatives to see where the outcome will be, but the way the world is going with the use of graphics in general, we're going to need a technically literate society.”

Mary Ann Skweres is a filmmaker and freelance writer. She has worked extensively in feature film and documentary post-production with credits as a picture editor and visual effects assistant. She is a member of the Motion Picture Editors Guild.