International. To take advantage of the new advances in audiovisual technology for the benefit of education, the Spanish company Indra has been working on the development of a new methodology for teacher training, based on online practices in a three-dimensional virtual world.
According to the company, with the SimAULA R&D project, teachers will be able to develop school plans, teach subjects in virtual classrooms in which the behavior of a class will be reproduced and interact with the avatars-students.
For this they will have a strong support of technology, with the development of a virtual platform that integrates multiple levels of detail, fidelity and simulation of interactions with student virtual agents.
They also seek to reproduce the behavior of the teacher, the student or the class, the 3D design of the class and learning tools such as blackboards or books, as well as the definition of the appearance of avatars (children, adults, man, woman, etc.) and their way of communicating, such as their tone of voice, their gestures or their way of expressing themselves verbally.
The project foresees the development of a pilot this year, in which 200 students and 60 teachers from Spain, the United Kingdom, Italy, Bulgaria and Greece will participate in their respective languages. After defining and developing the pilot sites, the chosen users will be able to use the platform, test it and validate it.
It is expected that in its implementation phase it will reach Latin America, a region in which the company has a strong presence.
