| |
| |
New Frontiers in Virtual Learning
Open Source Projects Create Platform for "Immersive Education"
What's on the horizon for innovative new learning environments? One exciting new concept is "immersive education," a learning platform that combines interactive 3D graphics, game and simulation technology, virtual reality, voice, chat, Web cams, and rich digital media with online course environments and classrooms.
Immersive Education: Rich, Collaborative Environment for Learning
Unlike traditional online courses, which involve the delivery of simple Web pages or streaming video, immersive education combines interactive virtual reality and sophisticated digital media with collaborative online course environments and classrooms. It's designed to immerse and engage students in the same way that today's best video games grab and keep players' attention.
Immersive education supports self-directed learning as well as collaborative group-based learning environments that can be delivered over the Internet or using fixed-media such as CD-ROM and DVD. Shorter mini-games and interactive lessons can be injected into larger bodies of course material to further heighten and enrich the immersive education experience.
Imagine, for example, a history class that lets students explore the halls of the Forbidden City of Beijing from home or a lecture on nanotechnology that includes a lab session for participants to examine and manipulate molecular structures entirely online. These types of activities would be too costly and impractical to undertake in the physical world, but thanks to advanced 3D simulation technology and resources like the Media Grid, the public utility for digital media, they can be created and distributed to students over the Internet.
Immersive education gives participants a sense of "being there" even when attending a class or training session in person isn't possible, practical, or desirable. It provides educators and students with the ability to connect and communicate in a way that greatly enhances the learning experience, giving remote learners a sense of community.
New Platforms Offer Alternatives to Second Life
So what are the technologies that will enable immersive education? One option is Second Life, which holds great promise for education. In fact, more than 150 colleges around the world have a presence in Second Life's 3D online world (as does Sun), where they do everything from holding distance-education classes to planning and building the ideal college campus. Particularly for distance education, virtual worlds create new possibilities for communication, sharing, and community-building.
Second Life, however, is not right for every educational institution. Some educators worry about inappropriate content. For others, creating a virtual presence requires time and resources they don't have. But for designers seeking alternatives, generations of incompatible technology — in the form of multiple proprietary APIs, data models and messaging systems — have created a landscape of complexity.
To give education customers more choices, Sun Microsystems and other organizations have created Darkstar University, a community of academic systems users, designers, and students working to create open source 3D learning environments for immersive education. The idea is to help educational institutions build their own virtual environments using open source technologies — and allow those environments to connect to a university's existing academic and administrative computing systems.
The Darkstar University platform for designing virtual environments includes:
- Code: NetBeans IDE, JavaFX, and Java Studio Creator IDE
- Content: OpenOffice, Pachyderm, MediaWiki, and Roller
- Client Software: Project Wonderland client-side 3D environment and SDKs. Project Wonderland is a 3D scene manager for creating collaborative virtual worlds. Within those worlds, users can communicate with high-fidelity, immersive audio and can share live applications such as Web browsers, OpenOffice documents, and games. Project Wonderland has already been termed "impressive" by reviewers, who say that it "could well be the major game changer."
- Game Server Software: Project Darkstar server-side game server. Project Darkstar is the game industry's first open source, enterprise-grade, highly scalable, online game server. Project Darkstar source code is now available for download and free use under the GPLv2 license.
- Workstations: Sun Ultra 20 M2 workstation and Ultra 40 M2 workstation; Sun Ray thin client for writing and debugging server-side code
- Servers: Sun Fire X2200 M2 server and the Sun Fire X4200 server
- Hosted Grid: Sun Grid Compute Utility at Network.com
Five universities have signed on to collaborate on development, systems development and deployment, open curriculum and pedagogy, and standards development: Saint Paul College, Minnesota; University of Essex, United Kingdom; Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China; Great Northern Way Campus, Canada; and the University of Sydney in Australia.
Mixed-Reality Lecture Room Links China, US and UK
One example of an early Darkstar University project is the Mixed-Reality Lecture Room, a joint project between Sun, the University of Essex, and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Its goal is to provide an open source mixed-reality environment in a traditional instructive higher education setting. Another goal is to enhance existing teaching practices by fostering a sense of community among remote students and between remote and co-located locations.
The Mixed-Reality Lecture Room builds on several Sun technologies, including Project Darkstar, Project Wonderland, and Sun SPOT (Sun Small Programmable Object Technology). In the Mixed Reality Lecture Room, Sun SPOTs will be used for physiological sensors that give real-time feedback to instructors on students' interest level as well as to increase accessibility for physically disabled students.
Researchers hope to have a prototype up and running by October 2008 and to demonstrate it at the Shanghai World Expo in 2010.
Sun's MPK20 Demonstrates Value of Virtual Environments
Virtual environments aren't hypothetical. Sun, for example, is using its own virtual world to enable collaboration among employees scattered all over the globe. In fact, on any given day, over 50 percent of Sun's workforce works remotely. MPK20 is a virtual 3D environment in which employees can accomplish their real work, share documents, and meet with colleagues using natural voice communication.
Just like on Sun's physical Menlo Park campus, known as "MPK," inhabitants of the virtual MPK20 office building can work together in planned meetings, or can talk informally in unplanned encounters. Unlike the physical campus, however, the MPK20 community can be built and maintained without the constraints of physical location.
"We're frequently asked why we use 3D for a collaboration environment," says Nicole Yankelovich, Sun Labs principal investigator. "While it might be possible to build a 2D tool with functionality similar to MPK20, the spatial layout of the 3D world coupled with the immersive audio provides strong cognitive cues that enhance collaboration. For example, the juxtaposition of avatars in the world coupled with the volume and location of the voices allows people to intuit who they can talk to at any given time."
The MPK20 software is built on top of the Project Darkstar server infrastructure. Darkstar, a platform designed for massively multi-player games, provides MPK20 with a scalable and secure multi-user infrastructure well suited for enterprise-grade applications.
For the client, the MPK20 prototype uses the Project Wonderland 3D engine for creating the world as well as the avatars and animations within with world. As you explore MPK20, you hear people, music, or videos in much the same way as you would walking around the physical world. The initial prototype supports the sharing of Java technology and X applications, but the vision is to eventually be able to use, edit, and share all desktop applications within the virtual world.
For a demo of MPK20, click here or on the image at the top of this article.
Media Grid Launches Immersive Education Initiative
One of the characteristics of the immersive education movement is its openness and focus on collaboration. In June, open standards organization MediaGrid.org launched the Immersive Education Initiative, an international collaboration of universities, colleges, research institutes, consortia and companies that are working together to define and develop open standards, best practices, platforms, and communities of support for virtual reality and game-based learning and training systems. Sun is on the board of the initiative.
At its launch, the initiative issued an open call to educators, students and professionals who have experience using virtual learning environments or video game technologies. Individuals and organizations can visit ImmersiveEducation.org to select the next-generation immersive education platform, contribute to best practices, and establish standards for virtual learning environments and game-based learning platforms.
Projects like these dovetail with Sun's philosophy of sharing innovation and building communities. Virtual worlds like this one are the next evolution of Sun's long-held vision: 'The Network Is The Computer.' The online virtual world offers unlimited potential for collaboration on everything from education and social issues to Java technology development. Dive in!
Questions or comments? Please email education_news@sun.com
| |
