THE EXERCISE: Students should first read the situation in the introduction to the activity. In a class/lab setting, an instructor might want to have students quickly discuss the situation in small groups before proceeding. When the situation is clear, students should click on the "LISTEN TO MY ANSWER" link. That will launch an audio file which includes the idiom "on the rocks", the lexical focus for this exercise.

Without further prompting, students should "enter my apartment" by clicking on the panoramic photo. There, they receive additional instructions in navigating the QTVR movie. The QTVR movie is only 80K in size and will take about a minute to download on a normal modem connection.

The "Number of Attempts" box tracks the number of clicks the student makes on hotspots until fulfilling the audio request. The "points" aren't very meaningful, and in fact students should probably be encouraged to find and read about all the "hidden messages" that they can. The hidden messages (10 in all) could provide a good basis for further class discussion, as might the cutting edge technologies employed. Instructors might also ask students to respond to a series of questions about the exercise by email. The possibilities are endless.

THE TECHNOLOGIES: This activity makes use of Apple's QuickTime Virtual Reality (QTVR) technology to place students in a gamelike, 360° immersive environment which they can explore interactively. It also uses streaming audio in RealAudio format and offers instant textual feedback on certain clicked-on objects generated via JavaScript.

NOTE: Both the QuickTime & QTVR Plugins and a RealAudio Player are needed to view this material. These are freely available for Windows and Macintosh computers.