Immersive Education through
Virtual Exploration & Discovery
Imagine using gaming technology to create virtual environments where young minds can explore topics in science and technology on their own - from visualizing carbon sequestration in the Amazon to exploring the electrical impulses of a supercomputer.
While STEM education has become a mantra in schools and universities nationwide, the results continue to lag.
What does virtual reality - and gaming - add to STEM education that textbooks, lectures, and videos cannot?
VR enlists young learners as first-person investigators, lifting curiosity and problem solving along with badges. Built on real scenarios, it challenges misconceptions that constrain science literacy today. Best of all, it may ignite a young person's determination to become a scientist, an engineer, an innovator, and more.
The promise, in short, is great.
Connected Universe - a collaboration among programmers, designers, educators, and scientists - aims to bring this promise to life.
Explore Unreachable Places
Virtual environments allow learners to descend into deep oceans, traverse through time portals, explore electrical impulses of a supercomputer, or follow a water molecule through a giant tree.
Experiential Learning
Hands-on learning allows for a greater understanding of subject matter. It also promotes critical thinking and self-directed learning outside the classroom as well as within.
Real Time Simulation
We use visually engaging simulated models to challenge perceptions or misconceptions, especially when events take place over decades, centuries, or millennia.
Projects:
Earth Island
Inspiring Environmental Stewardship
Earth Island
Currently in Development
Climate change engages the rising generation unlike few other issues today. As global youth activist Greta Thunberg says: "I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our house is on fire. Because it is."
Thunberg's message is not lost among today's youth. In a recent groundbreaking survey of more than 10,000 young people in ten countries, three-quarters felt that the "future is frightening," about half said that they experienced climate anxiety to a degree that affected their daily lives, and about a quarter indicated fear about having children due to the climate crisis.
Our first - rightfully ambitious - project engages youth, through a gaming platform, in the thinking and search for solutions to climate change that give hope. In Earth Island, users also explore an ever-expanding library of interactive worlds to investigate real world careers like a city planner designing zero carbon cities, a scientist protecting vital ecosystems, or an engineer developing new net-zero technologies - the new thinkers, inventors, activists and artists needed to turn our climate trajectory around.
A Photorealistic World
Earth Island will be accessible to computer screens, gaming consoles, mobile devices and virtual reality headsets.
Global Warming Solutions
The vast wealth of practical knowledge available to abate global climate change is incorporated in intriguing games that originate from the microcosm of one's own island environment.
User Interface
The UI for Earth Island allows for intuitive experimentation and feedback through simulation, internet, videos, and chat sessions with other players.
Paleosaurus
Evolutionary Science in a Jurassic World
Paleosaurus
NSF Funded Project
This collaboration with faculty at East Carolina University is a study for using immersive learning in evolutionary biology classes.
Paleosaurus is the first of two lab games for students to dive deeper into complex topics of evolution. In this Jurassic environment students track dinosaur species collecting genetic data to be analyzed and mapped onto a phylogenetic tree. This game touches on theories of the evolution of feathers and flight.
Immersion
Our complex virtual worlds hold the key to experiencing infinitely varied environments like a real-world scientist or explorer.
Virtual Exploration
Imagine chasing a dinosaur in its natural environment and then collecting genetic data for genetic and comparative analysis.
Deep Learning
Experience the world from a frog's perspective by caring for tadpoles, defending territory, calling mates and chosing which trade-offs are most beneficial for survival.
From a nano particle to a neuron inside the brain, from the
deepest ocean trench to the sun's molten core, our
experiential learning platform takes a student on a dynamic
journey which rewards curiosity and promotes
comprehension.
Using a sophisticated, yet intuitive set of tools, teachers
can track and interact with students within the game
environment.
About Us
Connected Universe arose as a collaboration between programmers,
designers, educators, and scientists dedicated to enhancing
educational experiences for both teachers and students at all
educational levels through gaming technology.
Connected Universe Founders
Eric Thiermann
Co-Founder
Eric Thiermann is an Academy Award-nominated short doc film producer and cinematographer, founder of Impact Creative in Santa Cruz. He has lensed hundreds of environmental and socially relevant documentaries and countless videos for fortune 500 companies during the past 40 years. His fascination with story-telling and new media converged in Connected Universe, a force majeure for virtual education.
Ethan Summers
Creative Director
Ethan Summers is an Emmy-awarded digital artist with over 30 years of experience in visual effects for feature film, educational software design and science visualization. His expertise in these areas is an ideal compliment to forward the CU vision of communicating world changing ideas in science and technology.
Anne-Marie Napoli
Managing Director
With a keen interest in new technologies combined with a background in biology and visual arts, Anne-Marie brings to Connected Universe an ambition to fuse education with interactive media. She's started several small digital media companies and a non-profit organization to explore how interactive art can inspire critical thinking.