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Introduction — Ken Brodlie & Anne Mumford
Background
Ken Brodlie started by asking why we needed another workshop and wondered if we had been here before.
There have been a number of workshops which have considered the question "what to teach?" These include:
• Eurographics (EG) workshop on "Teaching Computer Graphics", Manchester, 1985 which looked at a core syllabus.
• EG workshop on "Future Directions in Computer Graphics Teaching", Leeds 1989, which created a taxonomy of computer graphics teaching.
• IFIP workshop on "Computer Graphics and Education", Barcelona, 1991 which enabled participants to share international experiences.
Current activities include:
Sharing Experiences of Teaching:
• EG Working Group on Education which meets annually at the EG conference (next one is in Poitiers 24-25 August 1996)
• SIGGRAPH Education Committee who have an annual educators programme at the SIGGRAPH conference (August 1996 in New Orleans)
Sharing Resources:
• SIGGRAPH Education Committee through their slide sets and through HyperGraph providing online material
• AGOCG activities to provide training materials, slide sets and online materials
So, where are we now? We have a growing understanding of WHAT to teach in the fundamentals of computer graphics. We also have access to a growing set of teaching and training materials through organisations such as SIGGRAPH and AGOCG. The various workshops and conferences provide opportunities to exchange ideas.
We need this workshop because we have an opportunity to consider new areas which include:
• we need to understand WHAT to teach in the new themes of visualization, multimedia and virtual environments
• we have greater opportunity than before to collaborate on shared resources through the WWW. This includes resources beyond text and media and extends to 3D models, interaction and animation through Java and VRML.
Can we seize this opportunity?
Advisory Group On Computer Graphics (AGOCG)
The Advisory Group On Computer Graphics (AGOCG) provides a single national focus for computer graphics, visualization and multimedia within the UK higher education community. AGOCG is concerned with all aspects of visual information and its processing and presentation. AGOCG's programme of work is directed on a day-to-day basis by the
Co-ordinator, Dr Anne Mumford, who is based at Loughborough University. AGOCG has employed support officers in areas of new technology where the community needs extra assistance in learning about new tools and techniques (visualization and multimedia). AGOCG acts as an "umbrella programme" providing funding for a series of small projects which are timely and cost effective and enable experts in the HE community to advise others on best practice. These projects include preparing state of the art reports, training materials, courses and software evaluations.
Through this workshop AGOCG hopes to facilitate interaction between institutions and organisations and to take up the recommendations with appropriate funding bodies and agencies.
see:
http://www.agocg.ac.uk/
ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee
SIGGRAPH is the ACM's Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics. ACM SIGGRAPH is extremely interested in supporting both Computer Graphics education and the use of Computer Graphics in education. The ACM SIGGRAPH Education Committee was established to accomplish this task. The Education Committee currently has over twenty different projects, involving more than fifty volunteers from around the world in the areas of curriculum studies, resources for educators, and ACM SIGGRAPH conference related activities. The Education Committee is always soliciting new ideas and volunteers to implement the ideas.
see:
http://www.education.siggraph.org/Graphics Multimedia Virtual Environments Visualisation Contents