Research into virtual field trips (VFTs) started in the 1990s but, only recently, the maturing technology of devices and networks has made them viable options for educational settings. By considering an experiment, the learning benefits of logging the movement of students within a VFT are shown. The data are visualized by two techniques:…

Routing is the process of selecting appropriate paths and ordering waypoints in a network. It plays an important part in logistics and supply chain management as choosing the optimal route can minimise distribution costs. Routing optimisation, however, is a difficult problem to solve and computer software is often used to determine the best route.…

Professionally developed and freely accessible through the Internet, scientific data maps have great potential for teaching and learning with data in the science classroom. Solving problems or developing ideas while using data maps of Earth phenomena in the science classroom may help students to understand the nature and process of science. Little…

This experiment tested the ability of people to recall the locations of buildings in a familiar campus setting. Ten graduate students represented the relative locations of buildings by pairwise distance judgments and by direct mapping of locations on a Tektronix cathode ray terminal. Both methods led to accurate judgments. (Author/CTM)

This experiment investigated preferences for the location of facilities in an ideal town. Ten graduate students represented the relative locations of facilities (home, school, factory) by two methods: (1) pairwise ideal distances on a 100-point scale and (2) direct planning of locations on a Tektronix cathode ray screen. (Author/CTM)

This article reviews two experiments on the mapping and planning of actual (campus buildings) and hypothetical (ideal town facilities) items in a two-dimensional space. Direct mapping (planning) techniques are preferred over the method of pair comparisons, especially for the actual environment. (See TM 504 879-880) (Author/CTM)

The thoughts of a group of preservice teachers about classroom technology were studied by asking them to visualize their ideal classrooms. They were then asked to visualize, or visually represent, their thinking on paper by completing a map of the ideal classroom. Subjects were 106 education majors, 8 of whom were male. Classroom maps were…