I’m enthralled by Google’s free 3D-modeling program, SketchUp, even if it has been around in one form or another for several years. Perhaps my background in architecture makes me a sucker for easy to use 3D, but as an educator, this tool seems to have promise — especially for the humanities.
For one, it’s easy to use, right out of the box, comes with a community of users who freely share textures and styles for use in models, it can export to Google for the world to see (and interact with), and the limit is only measured by the designer’s — or better yet, student’s — imagination.
Wherever there is material culture, or text that describes it, there lies an opportunity for investigation of that form, or a virtual recreation of that form, or perhaps even a reinvention of that form.
Watch how real stuff becomes virtual real estate.
And imagine what a bunch of bored twenty year-olds could do over a long weekend…