Abstract:

The experimentation of innovative technologies applied to learning, with particular reference to professional technologies designed to be used in other application contexts, led the staff of the Educational Innovation Office and E-learning Lab of University of Study of Perugia to define the potential that some technologies can express both in the didactic and research fields. The contribution illustrates research activities and operational applications focused on the use of 360 ° cameras.

The experimental phase saw the participation of many departmental structures of the University of Perugia, implicitly generating an important multiplicity of case studies whose results have been analyzed and elaborated in order to produce "Models for the construction of interactive Learning Objects (L.O.) realized in the environment 360 ° "that can be replicated and used in all academic contexts.

The production process has brought benefits, limits and added values ​​that this technology (360 ° camera) can bring to the world of Education and even more specifically to the world of Learning. In fact this technology is used not only to improve production process: “The introduction of 360° camera technology offers a complete view of the scene in a single image and can be useful to reduce the number of devices needed in the tracking problem”[1], but it is used mostly to equipping teachers and students with innovative technological tools able to replicate environmental contexts of strong study interest, but physically inaccessible to a large number of presences (surgical rooms, construction sites, archaeological sites, etc.).

In fact, in such contexts it is possible to detect difficulties in access determined by the level of risk of the person, or specific problems such as particular medical therapies performed with patients conditioned by the presence of strangers (eg, therapy session for aphasic patients [2]).

To Realize this type of L.O. it is necessary to start from a planning phase in which: a) the educational objectives to be achieved are established, b) the objective of L.O. is focused, c) the technical preparation of the scene is designed. During the same phase, the teacher must include the preparation of tools that generate user interaction and must provide for the use of technologies capable of creating a direct involvement of students such as glasses for virtual visualization and augmented reality services.

The final result will be a L.O. not only respectful of the learning times of each student through the possibility of controlling the reproduction of the LO, but also engaging given the possibility, through an augmented reality viewer, of being able to be immersed in the setting.

In order to better understand the potential of this type of L.O., the contribution analyzes two different applications: one in the didactic field, with the faithful reproduction of a veterinary surgical room and one in research, with the reproduction of environments used for the analysis of brain activities during the different learning phases.

References:
[1] Cascia, M. (2017). 360 tracking using a virtual PTZ camera, University of Palermo, Italy (pure.unipa.it/it/publications).
[2] afaṡìa: Partial or total loss of language functions, as a result of brain injury and independently of disturbances of the phonatory apparatus or auditory organ.

Keywords:

Innovative Learning Objects, Technology, 360 camera, e-learning.