An interactive agent-based learning environment for children

This paper presents an educational distributed virtual reality-based environment for children called EVE-Environnement Virtuel pour Enfants. EVE is used in elementary schools from different countries as a supplementary tool in teaching children to read. This virtual environment supports cooperation among members of a dispersed team engaged in a shared context. By the mean of their avatars, which are special cases of agents, children are allowed to interact and to give decisions using cooperative mechanisms. The virtual environment architecture is reactive agent-based. The FCM-like dynamic action planning mechanism assures the agent´s adaptability to its environmental changes. It also allows the pedagogical agent to adapt its behaviour to the child´s actions. The implementation is based on a client-server architecture, VRML and C++ as languages and AReVi as graphical rendering API.