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LinkWorld was developed in Spring 2000 to provide a location where counseling, tutoring, mentoring and other forms of support can take place for Borderlink students, teachers and counselors. LinkWorld was designed to reflect the natural environments (biomes) surrounding the school districts in Imperial and San Diego Counties. Through the links on the left, you can take a bird's eye view of LinkWorld and its biomes find out more about how it was created.
Why did we choose to develop a 3D world for Borderlink? The Borderlink Project is funded under a Technology Innovation Challenge Grant. The second word in that grant's title is "innovation." Some form of innovative technology is critical to include in the implementation of our program. While a growing body of literature shows the benefits of using collaborative 3D environments in education, the Borderlink Project is the only one funded by the Technology Innovation Challenge Grant program to pioneer the use multi-user desktop 3D. The reason why we chose this type of collaborative program is because the geographic distance that separates students, teachers and counselors in the Borderlink Project is very large.
The key question we asked at the outset of our program was: How do we provide regular learning and counseling and collaboration opportunities to a geographically distributed group of participants in a low cost manner? In order to conserve resources related to extensive travel or long distance phone costs, we believe an online multi-user environment is both an efficient and innovative tool. (Please see this page for more detailed highlights of the literature surrounding 3D collaborative environments in education).
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