ok. this is rather exciting, i think
Some of the Whitehills cluster schools (and a few schools in Mildura) have been involved with a pretty cool virtual world project called River City - immersive 3D world for learning science, where you engage in enquiry learning tasks via avatars (virtual characters). Kids and teachers have really liked it, and there is also research confirming it is particularly effective in communicating science concepts to kids who might be at risk of dropping out of science (they've tested control classes etc) (i've described it here before)
Access to their simulation has been free but is limited – its developed and run by Harvard graduate school of education - we’re the only Australian schools they’ve taken on and they are having some resource issues supporting that (eg our access clashes with them upgrading or testing software at night etc) At one stage it looked like they could give us a full copy of the simulation, which was going to go on the Flinders Uni servers, at the Aus Science and Maths school – but that fell through – turned out the legal people weren’t quite as ready to give away tools like this, even though the researchers liked the idea of a greater pool of student data as a trade off
so, they offered to give some advice if were interested in building our own "next generation" version - ..... which was nice - but felt a bit huge.. right - so we'll just go out develop an enquiry learning, immersive virtual world, simulation project, here. Sure, no problem. But unlikely as that may seem ... it seems to be happening...
The principal of the Australian Science and Maths School, Jim Davies, suggested we try to tap the “Science by Doing” / enquiry learning agenda . to cut a long story short, we've been talking with a few people about developing a simulation in the same style (with a sustainability theme) and Swinburne uni have just committed themselves to definitely taking this on – fits very well with their expertise and desire to take their games and multimedia dept into developing educational simulations - in short they think they can make a rich and immersive and customisable simulation - in fact a flexible simulation producer - for very minimal costs, using their inhouse and student expertise, graduate projects etc, for schools
(i met one of their lecturers when i took a programming class to the ACMI - has bubbled away since then) - the official "science by doing" agenda hasn’t got behind this yet - but Swinburne are keen to build a prototype by middle of next year - using student and inhouse labour. ASMS is also partnering and sponsoring this. it will be a simulation builder - and will leverage our experience so far.
River City is engaging and well designed – but as a user (or trainer) you can’t change anything in the design or curriculum. (there was also a tech problem that stopped it working from some locations). We’re planning to keep this model more easily customisable. The first version will be around "sustainability" and will be customisable in itself. River City is also built on older technology which has dated somewhat - good as it is, the new stuff will look better, allow richer interactions, has a full physics engine (the Unreal engine) inside it etc.
Swinburne's expertise is the technical side - i saw what the 3rd year students are doing on global warming simulations etc and so i can well believe that. We'll need to develop a group to look at curriculum for science learning in this environment, comparable to the River City curriculum and training docs
Didn't look like it was all going to come off for a long time ... but now looks it will ... which is great. Spin offs should be interesting- eg maybe linking in programming students - some real project examples for them - and swinburne looks likely to allocate a 3rd year student via an industry placement to work on it - so we can aim to get the secondary students to meet the undergrad developers etc - and of course the science currculum needs development and testing by teachers etc. we also can get an explorable model of one of the new Bendigo schools in there as well (technically, its quite easy, apparently, if we can get enough access to plans). .. have discussed that with a the regional office staff etc . Weeroona, or loosely Whitehills cluster, and the Aus Maths and Science School, are the nominal "client" (ie between us we will provide the design brief, look at developing curriculum etc)
the harvard "River City" person i met through video skype and email, Ed Dieterle, is also willing to give some general support ... so no shortage of ideas flying around at the minute - he just wrote an email, from Chicago airport, as i finished this at midnight ... so all interesting developments. (Like River City, it will most likely be targeted at middle school - upper primary to mid secondary - and maybe older as well - the appeal of RC was pretty broad. )
links :
story of how we got involved
Education Times article (p15)
background on our attempts to tap the Science by Doing agenda (and Swinburne rebuild project)
River City site (this is not the simulation - just an info site, with movies, overview etc)