KMi’s first ‘robot’ for Google Wave has started surfing. It isn’t very smart, and can’t do much as yet but still demonstrates the exciting potential of Google Wave to transform the online aspects of distance education. Rocky is designed to offer information about the microscope slides used in Earth Sciences courses such as S276, and can even take over control of the online virtual microscope to demonstrate ideas presented in the course texts. 

The Google Wave version of the virtual microscope and its associated robot has been developed by KMi consultant Tammo Freese and KMi researcher Dr Peter Whalley, in conjunction with Prof. Simon Kelley, Dr Mahesh Anand and Dr Andy Tindle of the Earth Sciences department.

For further information on this project contact Dr Peter Whalley p.c.whalley@open.ac.uk