Experience the Classroom of the Future

At the e-culture Show in Amsterdam on the 12th - 13th of November 2000, you can experience the classroom of the future; no more shrieking chalk on the blackboard, no mouse shoulders at an early age, no isolated children or loss of creativity. In the classroom of the future the board is a large interactive computer display, and the children are working together at workplaces with integrated displays, they can activate with a pen.

IT in a classroom of small children is a topic that can get at lot of people off their seats. Some believe that IT limits the student's creativity and isolates them at their respective computer screens. But it doesn't have to be that way. A team of scientists and teachers has created a computer integrated classroom for early learners (4 - 8 years) that features a synergy between social, educational and technological factors. The team is part of the European organisation i3 (short for Intelligent Information Interfaces). The project is called NIMIS and has already been tested at schools in Germany, England and Portugal.

Small Intelligent Agents Helping School Children
During the learning process, the children can get help from small, virtual, intelligent agents. As the children are early learners, the dialogue between them and the agents has to be non-written. At hand, the teachers can give the agents knowledge about learning tasks and about the learners. This allows for interaction to adapt to the children's characteristics such as motivation and their level of knowledge.

A Variety of i3 Projects Will Be Exhibited at the e-culture Show in Amsterdam
At the e-culture show i3 will also exhibit five other projects. Three of these projects focus on Experimental School Environments (ESE):

The Pogo-project is exploring appropriate ways for children to create and share stories in an educational setting in interaction with new technologies.

The Caress-project (Creating Aesthetically Resonant Environments in Sound) has created Soundbeam, a type of technology that links movement to sound.

The éTui-project has developed a toy, that can be taught in a way that helps young children understand and reflect on the learning process.

The Escape-project investigates the exploration and development of the concept of an electronic landscape as a virtual environment that provides interconnections to other virtual environments. An electronic landscape is a place where inhabited information spaces meet.

The LiMe-project has developed IT that integrates every day objects like café tables and bus stops in a completely new, user friendly fashion. The idea with LiMe is to help the people in various neighbourhoods to interact and share information and thereby create a common Living Memory.

More Facts About i3
The European Union founded i3 in 1996. i3 aims to change technology by developing radical new ways of computing, as well as interfaces, which are transparent and intuitive to use. These radical changes give more scope to things that technological developers have largely neglected so far: Social contact and community-building, creativity, joy and play, mobility - the kinds of things that enhance the quality of life, and makes life easier instead of harder. People of various backgrounds (teachers as well as computer scientists, psychologists alongside designers and artists) collaborate in i3 to make this happen.

i3 Will Be Present at More Exhibits in November
Many of i3's results have now reached a sufficient degree of maturity and practicality to be of real interest to people. This is marked by the fact that the results will be exhibited at the following three large and influential events during the month of November: IST2000 in Nice, e-culture in Amsterdam and Salon de l'Education in Paris.

Children working by the NIMIS workplace.

By the NIMIS workplace drawing with a pen on the display is as easy as drawing with a real pen on a sheet of paper.

Additional Information
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