Croquet
Definition
Croquet is a new open source software platform for creating deeply collaborative multi-user online applications. It features a network architecture that supports communication, collaboration, resource sharing, and synchronous computation among multiple users. Using Croquet, software developers can create powerful and highly collaborative multi-user two- and three-dimensional applications and simulations.
Educational Uses
Croquet looks and feels like a virtual reality game, but in terms of its development and goals is radically different. While the goal of most games is to hurt, destroy, and dominate, the goal of Croquet is to create and collaborate. Educators have often been attracted by the features of gaming software, which are highly collaborative, interactive, and intrinsically motivating. But these gaming engines aren't necessarily well suited for teaching and learning because corporations own and control the code and allow users only limited functionality. Croquet, on the other hand, is open source software, which means that anyone can access the code or the tools and create, extend, or adapt the virtual space to their own ends.
Croquet is also different from many other educational gaming projects in that it is an attempt to overcome the limitations of traditional online learning environments. It enables learners not only to gather, discuss, and analyze information, but also to actively construct it. They can manipulate and annotate and even make three-dimensional objects (albeit primitive ones), and eventually will be able to attach behaviors to those objects. Current educational uses include
- collaborative mind mapping;
- visualizing writing as three-dimensional objects;
- physics simulations such as of vector fields, the effects of gravitational forces, and weather patterns;
- manipulating and annotating three-dimensional representations of archeological and other artifacts; and
- participating in a fully immersive Spanish language game.
Issues
In its current form making worlds in Croquet requires considerable programming and graphic art skills, but as more people use the program they will develop a library of shared objects and worlds to which any user will have access.
Examples
See the following for examples of how others are using this type of tool to enhance learning.
Screenshots of what some users have done with the Croquet system (taken from various proof-of-concept and other implementations) are available on the Croquet site.
Using Croquet to Teach Writing
Information is available on the DMC site about how Lee-Ann Kastman Breuch, a faculty member in the Department of Rhetoric, used Croquet for three-dimensional mind mapping activities and about how Bernadette Longo, another rhetoric department faculty member, and her students used Croquet while redesigning online writing centers.
Resources
The following sources may help you use and teach with this type of tool.
Information about how to set up Croquet and navigate, use controls, and interact with others in it is available on the Croquet Project site and also as a portable document format (PDF) file.
Research
The following research literature has been published about the educational uses of this type of tool.
Lombardi, J., and M. P. McCahill. "Enabling Social Dimensions of Learning Through a Persistent, Unified, Massively Multi-User, and Self-Organizing Virtual Environment." Croquet Project, 2004. http://www.croquetproject.org/Site PDFs/2004 Enabling Learning.pdf.
Lombardi, M. M. "Croquet, Anyone? Designing a More Responsive Online Learning Environment." Teaching with Technology Today 10, no. 5 (April 2004). http://www.uwsa.edu/ttt/articles/lombardi.htm.
McCahill, M. P., and J. Lombardi. "Design for an Extensible Croquet-Based Framework to Deliver a Persistent, Unified, Massively Multi-User, and Self-Organizing Virtual Environment." Croquet Project, 2004. http://www.croquetproject.org/Site PDFs/2004 Design for MUVLE.pdf.
Smith, D. A., A. Kay, A. Raab, and D. P. Reed "Croquet: A Collaboration System Architecture." Croquet Project, 2003. http://www.croquetproject.org/Site PDFs/2003 Croquet Collab Arch.pdf.
Smith, D. A., A. Raab, D. P. Reed, and A. Kay "Croquet: A Menagerie of New User Interfaces." Croquet Project, 2004. http://www.croquetproject.org/Site PDFs/2004 Croquet Menagerie of New UIs.pdf.
