Open Cobalt

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## Contents

* 1 Introduction
* 2 Technology
* 3 In education
* 4 Links

## Introduction[edit | edit source]

"Open Cobalt Alpha is the first step in a long term project to make available a free and open source platform for constructing, accessing, and sharing hyperlinked virtual workspaces for research and education. The technology is being designed to make it easy to create highly capable and interlinked multi-user virtual workspaces, virtual exhibit spaces, and game-based learning and training environments that run on all major software operating systems." ( Open Cobalt home page, retrieved April 11, 2010)

## Technology[edit | edit source]

"Croquet is a powerful open source software technology that, in the form of the Croquet Software Developer's Kit (Croquet SDK), can be used by experienced software developers to create and deploy deeply collaborative multi-user online virtual world applications on and across multiple operating systems and devices. Derived from Squeak, the Croquet system features a peer-based messaging protocol that dramatically reduces the need for server infrastructures to support virtual world deployment and makes it easy for software developers to create deeply collaborative applications." (Croquet consortium home page, retrieved April 11, 2010).

## In education[edit | edit source]

Open Cobalt provides the basis for a common, open cyberlearning platform that supports a full range of teaching and learning activities, including assessment and analysis. Its unique technical architecture allows schools to host richly collaborative MUVE-based experiences “behind the firewall” using the school’s own local area network.

The technology also allows teachers to develop entire MUVE-based curricula (e.g. the virtual environment, embedded scenario and content, etc.), put that curriculum on a thumb drive and pop it into the school’s local network for instant distribution to networked computers throughout the school. Teachers can create new versions of their curriculum, restore old versions, and share the curriculum with other teachers through web-based repositories.

[...]

Because Open Cobalt is still an experimental and early stage platform technology, there are not yet many production-level uses in educational settings.

OpenCobalt Uses, retrieved April 11, 2010.]

## Links[edit | edit source]

* www.OpenCobalt.net (project home page)
* OpenCobalt downloads
* OpenCobalt Google Group
* The Croquet consortium (the technology behind)