Interactive3d learning objects take shape

How to build a Pit Latrine - translated into French (Senegal), Portuguese and Shangaan (Mozambique).

Hub tenant, the Naledi3d Factory, and UNESCO recently embarked on a collaborative project to take the concept of the Interactive3d Learning Object to a more integrated level.

The Interactive-3d Learning Object is a Virtual Reality-based learning object that conveys a specific item of knowledge and can be reused in different learning contexts. Users can change language elements (text or audio), making the material appropriate and acceptable to end-user communities.

This initiative has grown out of earlier projects where, for example, members of the RINAF Virtual Multimedia Academy (VMA) - Ethiopia, Senegal, Sudan, South Africa and Mozambique - participated in the development of water-themed CD-ROMS. A recent (UNESCO-funded) workshop held in Pretoria looked at the creation of VR-based applications in the African learning context; and focused on the localisation of Interactive3d Learning Objects to suit and address local needs.

This expanded group, which includes members from Zimbabwe and Uganda, form an embryonic network that can facilitate the localisation and dissemination of Interactive3d Learning Objects through community multimedia centres and schools, amongst others.

The intended outcomes include a local web-based repository for Interactive3d Learning Objects, interaction and communication between the Country network members and evaluation of their expectations and achievements before and after the project, modification of previously developed VR-based material on basic hygiene, a full proposal on Interactive3d Learning Objects, and a "VMA-III" concept document that outlines a future strategy for VMA as a driver of the development of multimedia-based learning material across Africa, including how Interactive3d Learning Objects and other new, exciting approaches can be integrated into a VMA "virtual space".

As one of the early activities in this project, the concept of Interactive3d Learning Objects and the Country network was presented at the eLearning in Africa Conference, the 1st International Conference on ICT for Development Education and Training, held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in May this year. An exciting outcome has been interest from Kenya, Somalia and Tanzania to join the Country network.

Over the past five years Virtual Reality (VR) has made strong inroads in the transfer of information and knowledge through the concept of the "Interactive-3d Learning Object", developed by the Naledi3d Factory. According to MD Dave Lockwood, "because of its intensely visual, interactive and engaging nature, an interactive 3D simulation creates an experience that is as close to reality as one can currently get. It engages with the highly visual nature of the human brain and this enhances the learning process by a significant order of magnitude, which ironically is exactly what we try to achieve in communities where the biggest gaps between the so-called Information-poor and the Information-rich exist".

For more information contact Paul Hector of UNESCO or Dave Lockwood of the Naledi3d Factory.

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