| dc.description.abstract | Spatial orientation is an important ability which should be encouraged in geometry courses of elementary schools. A preferred approach (in Germany) typically involves navigation and wayfinding tasks with pictures of a town depicted in a book. The use of computer-generated, virtual 3D worlds for teaching spatial orientation raises (especially for computer scientists) the two following questions: 1. How effective are particular navigation techniques, aids, and motion controls for facilitating children's spatial orientation and therefore the navigation in virtual worlds? and 2. What trade-off between realistic features and computer performance is optimal? A virtual 3D-city, developed in an interdisciplinary project, acts as a testing environment to answer these questions. Preliminary results indicate differences between navigation techniques of children vs. adults. The results will also be important to designers of virtual 3D worlds as educational software in general, who need such information for improving children's navigation in 3D space. | en_US |
