Guided Interactive Lessons in Science - with Voice

Proof of Concepts that showcase student engagement and teacher training for science and engineering with voice .

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Inspiration

** Learnroll - (Honor Rolll for learning )was created by a parent who felt that her daughter was not inclined to learning and was extremely stressed especially in STEM areas. It was perceived as complex, boring and difficult. Learnroll was a culmination of a real problem of millennial's learning and short attention spans.We are early adopters of emerging technologies and created our products/projects after talking to many educators/parents/students who helped us create platform/solutions that could engage and teach using technologies like AR and VR. As an educational technology company we preview many technologies and standards and AWS Sumerian had a low learning curve compared to other platforms we use and can be used by beginners to advanced professionals with knowledge in 3D/VR/AR. The ability to use a guided host can be useful in creating chatbots and guided lessons/trainings for students and teachers to follow. There is minimal coding or scripting and State Machine is a powerful tool to manipulate behaviors. The focus for Learnroll is small/short lessons mostly for middle/high school and early college students.

What it does

We have created few short tutorials inspired by the **AWS tutorials to create scenarios where a student in high school can learn about human anatomy using various content types like a 3D, video . The guided lesson can help in creating short lessons that are not long and can engage students - in concepts , theories that align to the curriculum standards. Cross platform VR with voice can also help students with learning difficulties like reading/writing.

How I built it

We followed the Tutorials and AWS documentation . Some of the steps used were

  1. Get models/prefabs from Blender or Sketchfab, Turbosquid, CGTrader etc
  2. Build your scene and drop in the components as required
  3. If you use AWS like Lex and Polly you need to setup AWS Cognito Pools
  4. We have mostly used static components and binding including HTML 3D .
  5. Create a STATE graph based on the behavior required

Challenges I ran into

The current proof of concepts are for demos only not a production based system so challenges were 1 Public Secure Deploy /WebVR for Android based Oculus GO

  1. Draw calls or Textures used were not optimized . Best practices document.
  2. Pricing that may exceed AWS Free tier limits especially using AWS Lex or Polly
  3. Consistent user experience using hosts - language and movements.
  4. Limited Asset store currently

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

We are happy to have created the proof of concepts and have found interest in learning and training community locally in NJ. We can create more lessons in less time that provide better value to students and teachers.

What I learned

The tool has a low learning curve . We can create multiple immersive experiences from the same scenes in AR or VR using few changes. The tool is easy for many web developers to get into VR especially WebVR developers who use AFrame or other similar frameworks. You can create more assets that can be used in live scenarios by users who may not like VR or AR using 3D in the browser. The pre-made hosts and actions/behaviors/speeches can help in simulating real training scenarios.

What's next for Guided Lessons in Science - WebVR using AWS Sumerian

  • Different guided interactive lessons in Science and Engineering that allow user interaction.
  • Commercially create guided lessons , models and simulations for High School/Higher Ed.

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