iSocial

We have created an informational handout that outlines the iSocial project. You can download the handout in MS-Word format from the following link.
 
Download informational handout

We have created an informational brochure that outlines the iSocial project. You can download the brochure from the following link.

Download the iSocial brochure.

The Wonderland team has created an 8-part video presentation which provides a technical overview of Project Wonderland, the open source toolkit that iSocial is using for creating 3D virtual worlds. The first video begins with a sampling of virtual worlds created by Wonderland open source community members and showcases the iSocial project.

The entire video set can be viewed here.

Part 1: Project Wonderland Technical Overview from Nicole Yankelovich on Vimeo.

The iSocial team was recently approached to submit a guest blog entry for the Wonderblog, the blog for Project Wonderland.

From the guest blog entry:

"Matthew Schmidt from the University of Missouri-Columbia began participating on the Wonderland forums this past spring. As we often do with frequent posters to our forums, we send them an email asking if they can share what they are working on: this helps us get to know our community better and satisfies our curiosity too. Matt is a PhD student and we found his project inspiring. We've had the pleasure of interacting with him (matty_x on the forums) and his student, Ryan Babiuch (jagwire on the forums) on several occasions. They've made excellent community members. We're delighted to have them author a guest blog, so that all the community can learn about their work."

Read the entire guest blog entry.

The iSocial team originally envisioned that youth would experience a 3D VLE customized to support social interaction and learning for the ASD population and adapted to the needs of the individual. The customization and adaptivity of features (e.g., representation, orthotics, and notification) and the study of the impact of that customization and adaptivity on presence, co-presence, behavior management and learning social competence guide the design and development of the system. By customization we mean being attuned to the needs and preferences of youth with ASD. For example the conversation console is a feature of iSocial customized to the needs of youth with ASD to have a mechanism for regulating some aspects of conversation, such as turn taking. By adaptivity we mean that the interface adjusts to how the social deficit or learning objective is manifest for this individual and to changes and development of the individual over time. For example, once a youth learns turn taking and is ready to practice this skill in conversation, the console can reduce the control it exerts or remove that feature. Similarly if a youth does not adopt the turn taking controls in the console, other forms of control can be substituted such as removing other members from view until it is the youths turn to speak.

Dr. James Laffey's teaching and research interests are in developing technology innovations to facilitate learning and support performance. He provided the leadership for the University's mission enhancement for networked learning systems, co-founded the Center for Technology Innovations in Education, and is the lead faculty member for the MU “There” initiative for envisioning, designing, developing and studying the advance of new 3D and network technology to improve how we learn, work and play together. He has been the principal investigator for several NSF awards to study and advance understanding and practice for bringing technology to bear in education.