Educative distributed virtual environments for children

Abstract

This paper presents a distributed virtual reality environment for children. This virtual environment supports cooperation among members of a dispersed team engaged in a concurrent context. The virtual environment maintains a shared information space described in a standard Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML) format. Users are allowed to interact and to give decisions using cooperative mechanisms. A user-friendly interface enables teachers to create their own stories that fit with children pedagogical requirements and generates new virtual environments according to teacher's specifications. The implementation is based on DeepMatrix as environment server, VRML and Java as languages and Cortona VRML plug-in from ParallelGraphics. It is actually running on the Internet: http://www.enib.fr/eve.