Design and Implementation of Collaborative Virtual Geographic Education Environment

A new geographic education environment supported by network and virtual reality,called collaborative virtual geographic education environment(CVGEE) was proposed.A framework of CVGEE was then proposed and a prototype was implemented in Java and Java 3D.The prototype was applied successfully in a distributed geographic education on tornado.Results showed that CVGEE changed education space from real centralized one to distributed virtual one,as well as real education progress to virtual one.Results also showed that CVGEE emphasized students' participation and immersive experience,which resulted in equal roles playing and group knowledge discovery in collaborative and interactive environment.