The simulation and physical situation place the participants in close proximity with each other to contemplate and attempt to solve complex global challenges. This award-winning mixed-use table design by Second Story Interactive demonstrates the flexible educational potential of well-integrated technology.

Encouraging user-generated content by creating a personalized memorial makes this trip to the history museum an enlightening experience.

At the core of the museum are Second Story Interactive’s (Portland, Oregon) Great War Tables. The two 26-foot-long interactive tables provide innovative group and individual educational activities that give visitors the opportunity to delve deeper into the strategic and technological aspects of this monumental event.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about the interactive elements at the National World War One Museum is how much they add to the story…Visitors can look at a Lewis Machine Gun, for example, and then turn around to a 26-foot long interactive table to explore its inner workings with a 3D model.

The museum’s displays also help personalize the war and make sense of complex historical events. A 10-screen portrait wall introduces people to the faces of those who sacrificed for the war. Visitors can also watch battles unfold on two interactive video screens, which break down the intricacies of trench warfare and put each conflict in context. Judge Kelly Goto found the depth of immersion impressive, as well as the level of research and presentation of complex materials.

The museum breaks ground technologically speaking, with the introduction of two 32-ft. long interactive ‘issues tables’ that allow up to 24 visitors at a time to participate in historical scenarios based on the events leading up to and surrounding the war. The stations, which evoke the conference tables used by generals and diplomats during the war, use proprietary sensing technology that allows visitors to interact with simulations, databases, and decisions-making scenarios. Located in the inner circle, they are new at this level of complexity. They not only allow visitors to work in large groups, they allow actual projects to be developed—like creating your own propaganda poster.

[M]useums have begun using overhead projectors to create interactive tables that are far more effective than their stand-up predecessors. Not only does a table fill the center of a room, it also provides a way for many people to get involved at the same time. Outstanding examples include one done...by Ralph Appelbaum Associates (produced by Second Story Interactive) for the National World War One Museum.

There are two Issues Tales, which enable visitors to access vast stores of information and to participate, individually or in groups, in a sequence of educational activities and projects. Each table is functionally a custom video theatre with a horizontal screen and multiple projection sources. It has six interactive multimedia stations and accommodates up to 24 people at a time.

At two interactive media tables, visitors can take part in activities that deal with diplomacy and the forming of alliances and the tactics and strategies of war. They can learn about aerial photography and camouflage, learn how a Lewis machine gun operated, create a propaganda poster, or take a crack at decoding the Zimmerman Telegram. The infamous German communiqué tried to persuade Mexico to go to war against the US, but served instead to fuel the American public’s anger toward Germany. Extensive diagrams, graphs, and maps throughout the galleries, along with a month-by-month timeline, relate factual information about the war. Animated video panels illustrate major battles.

There are interactive exhibits in which flashlights are used like mouse cursors to make selections on an illuminated table.

The Museum also has interactive stations where visitors ‘role play both making war and making peace,’ and a theater with a 100-foot screen playing rare film footage from the war.

The museum boasts a collection of more than 49,000 artists and uses interactive technology to tell the story of the war from those who lived through it.

The museum also seeks to wow the visitor with high-tech image displays and interactive features. Embedded in the curving lobby wall are 10 plasma screens from which the faces of more than 300 people who experienced the war—Kansas Citians and others—fade in and out of view.

In fact, video seems to be everywhere. There are fluid battlescape maps. The developments of the peace conference after the war can be followed on another screen.

Study tables let visitors play the role of national leaders during the war. They can make decisions and then see the consequences of their actions play out on display screens before them.

In other modes, the tables allow users to create their own war posters or memorial friezes, and then e-mail them.