Europeana Learning Diary III

Obligatory sharing of my boss fight badge of honour.

So, I've finnally had some time to dive in into module 2 of the course. An eerie accumulation of projects and events utterly ate into my time.

While reading the materials, quickly stumbled on this, about Europeana's offer of resources:

3D: virtual 3D representations of objects, architecture or places

Er... not really. Or my Europeana-fu is low. Avalability of 3D resources is low, in unusable and antiquated formats, as far as I could ascertain while diving into the library. It's kind of weird, considering how many european museums have Sketchfab accounts (a 3D online viewer, like YouTube, for 3D content) to offer 3D scans of it's materials, or make some of their heritage available for download on 3D printing repositories. MyMiniFactory's Scan The World is a stellar example of this, featuring thousands of 3D scans of artworks and architecture, wich anyone with a 3D printer can freely download and print. Europeana has a lot of catching up to do in offering 3D resources.

This might seem a harsh evaluation of Europeana, but bear in mind that my pedagogical and research interests are focused on 3D modeling, printing and using 3D resources in education. So far, Europeana is not a valuable source for any activity that I develop for my students.

For example, here is the resource that I've chosen for one of the modules activities:

Title of object: Modèle 3D de la restitution d'une sculpture romaine
Author: not available/3D scan/model by 3DIcons  CNRS-MAP Modèles et simulations pour l'Architecture et le Patrimoine.
Type of license: atribution, non commercial, non derivative works CC BY-NC-ND . 3D model non-downloadable.
Link to the object:
https://www.europeana.eu/portal/pt/record/2048708/FSJ_modele_3D_sculpture.html?q=TYPE%3A3D
(link to the actual 3D resource, viewer, non-downloadable: http://3dicons.gamsau.archi.fr/europeana/index.php?VARdr=FSJ_modele-3D-sculpture_3D_1)

Neither Europeana nor the original page have the model available for download. Europeana offers a jpeg of the object. Compare this to any search on Sketchfab, and you see my point. There's a lot of work to be done.

 

This is a very useful framework. Lots of food for thought here: Framework for 21st Century Learning.