Taking a walk with Professor Marina Bers can be very exciting, especially in virtual reality.
Bers' current research project, a 3-D computer game called Zora, won her a 2005 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).
The game allows several players to simultaneously act as inhabitants in a virtual city by walking around, talking with neighbors, or building a home, item-by-item.
"What she is doing that I think is particularly innovative is taking what is developing technology in one area, applying it to another established area, and enhancing both of them along the way," Tufts Child Development Chair Ellen Pinderhughes said.
The PECASE award is the highest honor given by the United States government to researchers with fledging independent careers. It was awarded to Professor Bers for the Zora program's innovative application to child development.
The premise of Zora: establish an online community where peers can connect. Think The Sims, but in an online community, and with educational merit.
"Technology today is in everyone's lives. It also includes social and emotional aspects - when people go on MySpace, they know that there are a lot of things playing out. What I am particularly interested in is how we can use technology to foster this idea of community development," Bers said.
The Zora program is encouraging the development and design of new communities to help children who have recently undergone organ transplant surgery. It was first used with Boston's Children's Hospital patients about a week ago.
The project gives the children a peripheral network of peers experiencing the same emotional issues-a network that could potentially encourage the children to take their medications, eat healthy meals, respect their doctors' wishes and develop upbeat perspectives on their new conditions.
Zora provides many
opportunities for personal expression, like the ability to custom design characters. Players can also insert their own values and stories into the game, which other players can see after they are incorporated in the virtual community.
Such creative freedom is a key element of Zora. "That's the big difference with The Sims. In The Sims, we are working within the constraints of the designer. Here, the person that is doing the learning is the designer," Bers said.
Users start building their homes from scratch and may pick the colors, textures and objects that fill them. This individual expression is very healthy for the Children's Hospital patients, who sometimes exhibit a need to assert independence.
The team of graduate students working with Professor Bers will soon conduct phone interviews to sample the children's responses.
"It seems they are not very afraid to share what they are feeling," graduate student Clement Chau said. "We first thought that they might be hesitant talking about their transplant issues, but it didn't seem like they were too afraid."
The hospital project currently has permission to continue for eight months, and plans have been made to expand the number of Zora users before the project's completion.
