Talk:Overview

From Education

It is important to clearly define the needs which motivate using 3D metaverses. Do we really need an avatar? Do we need to simulate a classroom? There is considerable overhead in implementing an educational metaverse.

I want to point to EduSim (http://edusim3d.com/) as an example of using Croquet for education, in which both teachers and students are building lessons. The interactive cell looks very interesting, but I can't seem to get it to launch. I am impressed with certain aspects of Croquet from an advanced user/developer perspective, but it can be difficult for novices.

We are currently involved in an NSF-funded project to build a 'serious' education game to teach environmental science using the Torque game engine. Since the engine is only $100, it provides a reasonable way of creating your own metaverse. We have relied heavily on the programming talents of undergraduate student interns from CS, under the direction of Steve Cutchin. Steve has linked it to a MySQL database so we can track all in-world events. The students are learning what it is like to be a research scientist on Antarctica.

There is also Adobe Flash and Director with Shockwave 3D. The next version of Director will be more tightly integrated with Flash, providing more direct interactive control between 2D and 3D. These tools are a bit pricey. But then so is Qwaq, and it is only 3D. Supplementing 3D metaverses with 2D is essential for these apps to be truly user-friendly. I have already built some data viz lessons around Shockwave 3D:

http://education.sdsc.edu/edportal/moodle/calcofi/lessons/shockviz/lesson1.html

http://education.sdsc.edu/edportal/moodle/calcofi/lessons/shockviz/lesson2.html

I have also built an earthquake data query tool for Google Earth at:

http://education.sdsc.edu/discoverdata/eqdata/getsomeeqdata.html