Two Eyes, 3D

Hey, all. Welcome to the obligatory intro post. I am a 3rd year science education PhD student at Tufts University. My main research interest is spatial cognition - specifically how to make representations of highly spatial scientific objects and concepts more accessible to students regardless of their innate spatial ability. Congrats if you made it through that. I'll try to keep the gibberish to a minimum in the future. But I may need your help to call me out on it.

Anyway, I think using stereoscopic representations in the classroom has some potential to help me in my quest. However, there is very little rigorous and empirical data on the use of stereoscopy in formal educational settings. And there are enough curve balls regarding stereoscopy do give us pause. Is it the real deal? Or is it just another technological flash in the pan?

While I intend this largely to be an academic blog, I want it to make sense. (Sometimes those are mutually exclusive.) So call me out if it gets wordy or, worse, boring! I do have some experience at this blog thing. I've had a personal blog at LiveJournal since February, 2001 and I started the Slacker Astronomy blog and podcast - which is now run by two very close friends who are eminently more capable than I.

Goals of this blog:

• Cover new stereoscopy research
• Report on my own research
• Pontificate about my navel
• Cover the business of stereoscopy (which is about to be huge)
• Be entertaining - or, at least, if I fail at that, to help you sleep.

Stereoscopy, by my definition, is the use of cues to create a sense of depth in an image. Most people experience this by using "3D glasses" in a movie theater. It's been around since 1858. But only now has the technology progressed to make it affordable and flexible enough for use in the everyday classroom. Heck, soon it's coming to a TV near you. And if I can figure this blogger interface out, I'll cover it for you.