Kindlelab Project: Open source & 3D immersive educational tools for K-12 education

Here is the plug:

The Kindlelab Project

"... Kindlelab is a consortium of educational designers, developers, thought leaders, and teachers working together to ensure open source and 3D immersive educational tools find their way into the K-12 educational setting. Any organization, individual, or company whose goal it is to ``ensure open source 3D immersive educational tools find their way into the K-12 educational setting`` are eligible and welcome to submit their application to be considered as a partner or contributor to this consortium. To become a partner submit your application here. For more information about how our consortium can help you with design, development, and consulting projects on your open source 3D immersive education project send us a note at info@kindlelab.com "

The Kindlelab Project is just starting up, and includes organizations such as the Immersive Education Initiative and the Reaction Grid. Open source software platforms related to the Kindlelabs Project include the Opensimulator Project, the OpenCobalt Project, the Wonderland Project, and Edusim.

Rich White, of the Greenbush Southeast Kansas Education Service Center, is the guy driving the KindleLab Project. He's known for his involvement in the Edusim project, ".. a slimmed down version of the core Open Cobalt Metaverse Project. Edusim is a 3D multi-user virtual world platform and authoring toolkit intended for your classroom interactive whiteboard (but equally powerful on the students laptop or desktop computers !).."

Even through there are funds from the stimulus package earmarked for technology in the schools, it is not enough to outfit every teacher's classroom with shiny IWB's. There are solutions out there! The following video by Rich White demonstrates how to make an interactive whiteboard for little cost, using a $20.00 BlueTooth adaptor, a $25.00 tripod, an existing projector, and an ordinary whiteboard. This concept is based on Johnny Chung Lee's Wiimote Project.

KindleLab on the WiiMote




Here's a screen shot of a KindleLab cell lesson/project by Rich White:






RELATED

From Rich White and Greenbush TV:

How to use Google 3D Warehouse to Build & Share Colbalt & Edusim Virtual Worlds

Rich White's "Mobile Immersive Learning Lab" Project; EduSim Update

Rich White is an educational technologist for Greenbush County, Kansas, has been working with the 3D interactive virtual world, EduSim, for quite a while. He's taking EduSim to the next level.

"The concept is one of an enclosed virtual learning space - with surrounded projection of the virtual learning world the students are exploring - similar to the StarLab Concept (with a rectangular configuration). along the lines of a CAVE - however simpler, mobile, and relatively in-expensive by comparison."

The project is at the beginning prototype stage.

Below is a demo of the virtual world as it is projected on two screens that are placed next to each other at a right angle, with the center of the virtual-world view positioned where the two screens meet:

This might be a great way of reaching students who have autism!

More about EduSim:

EduSim, for those of you haven't seen my previous posts on the topic, is a multi-user 3D interactive environment used in classrooms with interactive whiteboards:

Information from Rich White's Greenbush blog about Edusim:

Wikipedia entry:
"Edusim is a Cave Automatic Virtual Environment based concept of lesson driven 3D virtual worlds on the classroom interactive whiteboard or classroom interactive surface. The Edusim concept is demonstrated by the Edusim free and open source multi-user 3D Open Cobalt virtual world platform and authoring tool kit modified for the classroom interactive whiteboard or surface. The Edusim application is a modified edition of the open source Open Cobalt Project and relies heavily on the affordances of direct manipulation of 3D virtual learning models and Constructionist Learning Principles."

History of Edusim:
"The Edusim project began in September 2007 at the Greenbush Education Service Center in Southeast Kansas as an effort to bring an engaging 3D experience to the classroom interactive whiteboard. Pilot groups were established with 6th and 7th grade middle school students throughout Southeast Kansas to observe how students would be engaged through the software, and how the user interface would need to be augmented to account for the affordances of the whiteboard, and the usability of the students."

Here is a virtual world in Edusim in COBALT, showing how a drag and drop function is used for in-world VNC application sharing:

The Cobalt 3D metaverse browser has been modified for multi-touch interaction by some of the members of RENCI, a collaborative venture of Duke University and several other North Carolina universities. The video below is Dr. Xunlei Wu, demonstrating how gesture and touch is used to manipulate items and navigate through two Cobalt virtual worlds:

Some of the members of RENCI built a multi-touch table in addition to the collaborative multi-touch wall. For more information:

RENCI: Multi-Touch Collaborative Wall and Table using TouchLib: More about UNC-C's Viz Lab