Creating Web3D educational stories from crowdsourced annotations

Abstract 3D representation and storytelling are two powerful means for educating students while engaging them. This paper describes a novel software architecture that couples them for creating engaging linear narrations that can be shared on the web. The architecture takes advantage of a previous work focused on the semantic annotation of 3D worlds that allows the users to go beyond the simple navigation of 3D objects, permitting to retrieve them with different search tools. The novelty of our architecture is that authors don’t have to build stories from scratch, but can take advantage of the crowdsourced effort of all the users accessing the platform, which can contribute providing assets or annotating objects. At our best knowledge no existing workflow includes the collaborative annotation of 3D worlds and the possibility to create stories on the top of it. Another feature of our design is the possibility for users to switch from and to any of the available activities during the same session. This integration offers the possibility to define a complex user experience, even starting from a simple linear narration. The visual interfaces of the system will be described in relation to a case study focused on culture heritage.