Tereza G. Kirner

Development of a collaborative virtual environment for educational applications

This article presents the CVE-VM, a Collaborative Virtual Environment that has been developed for educational purposes. The system supports collaborative learning, according to the constructionism approach, and is intended to be used in Brazilian schools by children and teen-agers students. The article focuses mainly on design and implementation aspects, aiming to contribute to the development of similar multi-user systems.

Development of an interactive artifact for cognitive rehabilitation based on augmented reality

Cognitive rehabilitation, which uses software applications (multimedia), advanced physical devices (PDAs, cellular phones, etc.) or virtual reality applications, presents limitations of several types related to: workspace, realistic representation, intuitive interaction, dexterity demand, availability, devices dependency, user-friendly interface, customization, multi-sensory input/output, complexity, etc. Recently, the technological evolution has allowed the development of artifacts based on augmented reality that overcome most of the weaknesses of the applications implemented with the previous technology. In this way, this paper presents and discusses the development of an interactive artifact based on augmented reality, which makes possible intuitive tangible interactions, multi-sensory feedback, customization, simplicity and the implementation of cognitive exercises. Ten users evaluated cognitive applications running over the interactive artifact under the point-of-view of augmented reality, giving their impressions. Finally, we discuss the potential of the interactive artifact, pointing out directions to improve its structure and utilization by cognitive disabled people.

Providing More Interactivity to Virtual Museums: A Proposal for a VR Authoring Tool

This paper describes the museuVirtual project that is developing an authoring tool for the collaborative building of nonimmersive museums in virtual reality. The rationale behind museuVirtual is based on the observation that virtual museums found on the Internet normally have very limited opportunities for user interactivity. We examine different kinds of interactivity and propose an authoring tool that allows a teacher or student to create virtual exhibits in which dynamic interactive objects and chatterbots may be programmed in a relatively easy way. This proposal is strongly based on the concepts of actor-based programming and constructivist theory, which have been applied in the last five years to teach basic programming skills to beginners. The ideas applied with success in many previous experiments using 2-D graphics are now being introduced in an authoring tool that generates VRML/Java code. The museuVirtual project is developing a tool that not only allows the students to be the organizers and curators of their own museums, but also to work collaboratively, by building such museums in a virtual distributed environment.

Virtual reality authoring for schools

The paper describes a method for programming behaviours of objects in virtual worlds. It is designed to be easy to use and to shield users from complex coding and syntax errors. It has been tested in a number of projects within schools in Brazil.