Abstract:

This educational project aims to digitally reconstruct a wood library (collection of samples of various species of wood) in order to integrate them into the LMS. To do this, we propose the use of high resolution scanned textures to acquire three-dimensional reproduction of wood samples. This technology has been recently developed for the proposed application.

The final result of the work is, therefore, a virtual laboratory (VL) susceptible of being used by the students of the University, it is highly usable and it has a high applicability for the students, especially those at forest and civil engineering and architecture areas. In this way, it is possible to integrate up-to-dated knowledge that has been acquired “in situ” in the laboratory and integrate it for distance study programs, thus achieving a solution to a didactic need.

The virtual collection would help to overcome the problems inherent to the maintenance and manipulation of real samples of wood and is favourable for e-learning context. In addition, the procedure for three-dimensional recreation can be considered low cost, because the methodology in all aspects relies on free software and materials that are present in all engineering schools. This communication gives an approach for the integration of this type of materials in a LMS platform, concretely in Blackboard®.

Keywords:

Wood collection, Virtual laboratories (VLs), photo-realistic model, e-learning, forest engineering