The Second Temple Period Multimedia Educational Suite: With an Appendix on the Ceramic and Numismatic Evidence for Qumran’s Period Ia.

The Dead Sea Scrolls are without doubt one of the most significant manuscript discoveries of all time. The Scrolls, the people(s) who produced them and their associated sites of Khirbet Qumran, Ein Feshkha, and Jerusalem provide a fascinating locus of research. The study of the Scrolls has accelerated over the year’s hand-in-hand with the development of computer-based applications and the internet. As a result, the dynamic area of Dead Sea Scrolls and Second Temple period research can now be brought out of the Holy Land and into the international classroom, office, and home.
The Educational Multimedia Suite and Database is a multifaceted application focusing on the Dead Sea Scrolls and on the literature, history, and peoples of Qumran, with the goal of teaching, through interactive technology, individuals of all ages from a wide range of disciplines. A rich set of data is at the base of the Edusuite, including images of artifacts, the sites, and archival material; texts including the Scrolls, the excavation notes of Qumran and Ein Feshkha, and articles on the Second Temple period; a concordance to the Scrolls; the writings of ancient authors including Josephus, Philo, and Pliny; and 3D models of Qumran, Jerusalem in the Second Temple period, tombs from that period, and Masada.
Special features of the suite include a teacher’s “URL class generating tool,” through which readings and assignments can be created for distance learning; interfaces that cater to users ranging in level from beginner to expert; panoramic movies of the site and the caves through which the user can navigate in real time; links and menu bars to relevant data and real-time 3D images of the sites; interaction with characters in the “edutainment” games; and the use of Google Earth to view the world of the Second Temple period via the internet.