MIKHAIL FOMINYKH invited speech for ISTE

vAcademia presentation for ISTE from Mikhail Fominykh

Mikhail talks to us about the virtual environment vAcademia 

ISTE welcome tour 3D Recording1
 

vAcademia Tutorial

Short tutorial about main tools of vAcademia

Detailed instructions find on http://vacademia.com/site/info

vAcademia a virtual world for education

vAcademia is a virtual world for education. Here you can learn, here you can teach. vAcademia has everything you need for effective classes and lectures: convenient classrooms, interactive whiteboards with presentation tools, text and audio communication, and web camera support.

The key advantage of vAcademia over other worlds is its option to record classes.

This advantage is based on an original technological feature - 3D recording, which allows creating a new type of content that comprise both space and time. This type of content can be called ‘virtcast’ - a 3D recording of activities in virtual reality or a series of such recordings.

Some of the 3D recordings (for example, the most interesting ones) can be made periodical and replayed constantly in the locations of the virtual world. This feature allows to create a better atmosphere, since a visitor of vAcademia does not observe empty constructions, which often happens in other virtual worlds. Instead, the visitors can explore some of the classes going on with teachers and students involved. This might attract their attention and trigger curiosity.

Other vAcademia features include a set of teaching tools for collaborative learning. Interactive whiteboards can be used for drawing, displaying slides, video clips, desktop and application sharing, web camera sharing, and back-channeling. It is possible to use multiple whiteboards of different sizes in any class, and the users can focus their view on a certain board, using special controls. In addition, every participant is able to set up an additional whiteboard during the class and present some content on it. A coloured pointer can be used for focusing attention on a certain element of the board.

The virtual world vAcademia has a strong web support. While the main function of the 3D environment of vAcademia is providing tools for online classes, the web-site provides support for planning and managing classes and courses, searching and organizing 3D recordings. In addition, the web-site supports social groups and has social networking functionalities.

The web-site www.vacademia.com provides all types of support and information about the virtual world. In addition, a course management system is developed and available through the site. The web-site has several sections, which provide a particular set of tools.

To read the post check out this site http://elearningindustry.com/subjects/free-elearning-resources/item/262-vacademia-a-virtual-world-for-education

Educational Time Machine: Capturing Learning in 3D Virtual worlds

Educational Time Machine: Capturing Learning in 3D Virtual worlds

View more presentations from Mikhail Fominykh

In this paper, we present a new approach to educational activities in 3D virtual worlds, which is based on a new vision of educational content and opens new possibilities for learning. Traditionally, the content in 3D virtual worlds was thought as interactive media objects embedded in a 3D environment, but there was no means for capturing life activities conducted in such environments, except for recording screen videos. At the same time, the most valuable characteristics of this technology are in the synchronous interaction and rich life experience, which disappear in flat video. Therefore, we argue that a mechanism that allows capturing synchronous activities in a 3D virtual world without losing such essential characteristics has great value. Such mechanism is implemented within the project vAcademia, which aims at developing an educational virtual world with a set of tools for collaborative learning (http://vacademia.com/). The virtual world vAcademia is currently under beta testing, which includes several cases from which the feedback is being collected. The main original feature of vAcademia is 3D recording, which allows capturing dynamically everything in a given location of the virtual world. The use of resultant 3D recordings is similar to time travelling. It allows a group of learners to experience a past class and collaborate there, recording it again if needed. In such a manner, vAcademia supports a new type of digital content – 3D recording or virtcast, which is created based on synchronous activities and opens new possibilities to explore.

Virtual Orchestra in English lesson

Teacher from Brazil Eduardo Martins hold a lesson in vAcademia about music. Teacher used a little number of user interactive objects features in compare with reference class, but however the result was very impressive. Eduardo uploaded some 3D-models of musical instruments into resources collection and added playing unique melody on click to each 3D-model. During all lesson the teacher and students are discussed virtual orchestra.

English lesson in cafe. Video

An English lesson held in the interior of an open-air café became one of the clearest examples of the interactive user objects usage. The interior included not only static objects: the bar was decorated with rotating trays with pizza and the phonograph played soft music.

An example of a lesson with interactive user objects in vAcademia

One of the new features of the latest version of vAcademia is implementing interactive user objects.

 Now teachers can upload their own 3D-models into the virtual world, configure and place them in a temporary location or inside a scheduled lesson. Besides it is possible to define interactive behavior for uploaded objects, for example, on click reactions such as playing sounds, viewing messages, switching into the virtcast (3D-recording), going to a location in the virtual world, opening a web-site, changing textures on a model and more.

This new exciting opportunities can be useful in many different fields: for presentation of architectural projects, software products, coursework and degree, in teaching chemistry, history and other subjects. An English lesson held in the interior of an open-air café became one of the clearest examples of the interactive user objects usage. The interior included not only static objects: the bar was decorated with rotating trays with pizza and the phonograph played soft music.

 Students sorted products, given as 3D-models, into three categories: fruits and vegetables, sweets, meat and fish, and then practiced in pronunciation of these products. Each product had a sample of pronunciation attached to it, so that the students could click on the fruit, vegetable or meal and compare their pronunciation with the ideal.

 Next the teacher suggested to view a video from English café on the interactive board and write on the whiteboard all names of the products mentioned in the video.

 The lesson continued with listening. By clicking on the radio students listened to the dialogue and were asked to determine where the dialog took place: in the restaurant, in the dining room etc.

 Café menu was shown as a separate object with pages flipping on click. Using this menu students made orders as in restaurant. They were divided into three groups according to the number of tables and a student from another group played the role of the waiter so all of them one by one made their orders.

 In conclusion, students played “Make a sentence” game, choosing words on the yellow boxes to make a right sentence about the food.

 
You can view a 3D record of this lesson in vAcademia virtual world.