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Vancouver Aquarium Debuts High-Tech Educational Tools

Posted Friday, October 16, 2009

New Exhibit "Canada�s Arctic" Features Pioneering Displays

Vancouver, BC October 16, 2009 - On October 9, the Vancouver Aquarium opened its brand new exhibit, Canada's Arctic. In addition to beluga whales and fascinating marine species, the new exhibit includes four fully-interactive components which set a new standard for display technology.

The primary goal of the new exhibit is to show Aquarium members and visitors how climate change is impacting the land, people and animals of Canada's Arctic. The best way we can achieve that goal is to provide as many opportunities as possible to establish true, active connections between visitors and the exhibit content on display.  These real, live connections are the key to creating the educational experiences which will foster relationships between those in the north and the rest who seek answers to the mysteries held there.

Active connections, and the desire to create them, allowed the Aquarium's tech team to unfurl its tentacles into the depths of its collective imagination, and conceive new paths to learning never before seen at the Vancouver Aquarium.

To further the interactive cause, and in conjunction with Ideum, the Aquarium has developed new applications for two Ideum MT² tables. MT² stands for: Multi-Touch, Multi-User.  Essentially, this innovative concept allows an exhibit display table to be manipulated like a giant iPhone or iPod Touch.

The first multi-touch table is loaded with up to 200 pictures and videos from the Arctic. Pictures pop up automatically on the screen, and if no one touches a picture, it dissolves away after 10 seconds and is replaced with a different Arctic image.

The second table shows you the Arctic in a different way by bringing you a bird's-eye view of the top of the world. Instead of touching pictures, you can spin dials to look at things like Canada�s northern borders, shipping routes through the Arctic Ocean and how thick or thin the sea ice is at different times of the year.

The tables let you call up pictures of animals, interesting maps, the latest research and cool video clips just by touching their image on the screen. You can even pinch them smaller, spread them bigger, or rotate and slide them across the screen.

The Aquarium created "surprising connections" that automatically link related images if a user touches one of them while they're up on the screen at the same time. For instance, if one table user is viewing a beluga image while another user is viewing an image of a ship, a line will spider out between the two images to connect them and give an indication of how shipping is affecting belugas.

"With the Canada's Arctic exhibit, we're pushing boundaries and leaving static exhibits behind," says Jeff Heywood, Content Manager, Vancouver Aquarium. "The new exhibit gives us the freedom to use not only new technology, but also create new implementations for existing technology to reach our visitors in new ways.  Multi-touch lets us see what happens when visitors are presented with a pool of rich content that they can explore in a tactile non-linear way. We've also connected our gallery visitors to web and mobile visitors, mixing their questions and comments, and making that content of part of our exhibit."

Canada's Arctic visitor driven content is centered on a 46-inch touch screen where visitors can post comments and questions about the Arctic and interact with other visitors' questions and comments on the screen.

The Arctic exhibit touch screen comment application was designed and built by Nitobi Software, a local software development company internationally recognized for their work creating innovative web, desktop and mobile applications. Importantly, the interactive touch application runs on the exhibit screen, on an accompanying website and on the iPhone.

"By connecting the touch screen to the Web, we're creating the next generation in kiosk design. Visitors can spread and share information in real-time at the aquarium and with others interacting via the website or their mobile devices. Web connectivity makes for an engaging model for education," said Andre Charland, Nitobi CEO.

"There's a lot of motion in the touch screen application design because it needs to draw in visitors from 35-feet away," said Chris Stone, Senior Interaction Designer at Nitobi. "We designed the app with kids in mind, so it's educational, fun, attractive and screams, 'Come play with me!'"

Another touch-screen application developed by Lift Studios and the Aquarium allows visitors to compare human voices and other sounds to the sound waves of beluga whale speech. Visitors will be able to listen to and compare sounds like beluga echolocation and sonar sweeps while learning about the Vancouver Aquarium's research into beluga vocalization. Visitors will walk away with an understanding of how belugas communicate and how that communication can be threatened.

Heywood continues, "We're not using technology for technology's sake, we're using it to keep our exhibit current, connected, and exciting. It's cool, there are not a lot of rules for what we are doing, we're going to be able to learn from our visitors as they are learning about the Arctic."

In addition to the much-loved and amazing beluga whales, the new exhibit will also display Arctic cod, char, sea stars, sea urchins and soft corals.

About the Vancouver Aquarium

The Vancouver Aquarium (www.vanaqua.org) is a global leader in connecting people to our natural world, and a self-supporting, non-profit association dedicated to effecting the conservation of aquatic life through display and interpretation, conservation practices, education, research, and direct action.

About Nitobi Inc.

Nitobi Inc. (www.nitobi.com) uses the latest in web technology--Ajax, Flash, Flex, Ruby, .NET and AIR--to create rich Internet applications for customers around the globe, including Bank of America, Time Warner and NASA. Nitobi is also the creator of PhoneGap (www.phonegap.com), a game-changing, open source mobile application development framework that makes it easier for developers to build cross-platform mobile applications.

Media Contacts

Kent Hurl
Vancouver Aquarium
604.659.3752
[email protected]

Julie Szabo
Nitobi
Ph: (250) 885-6845
[email protected]

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