Section: New Software and Platforms

MobiNet

Participants : Fabrice Neyret [contact] , Joëlle Thollot.

The MobiNet software allows for the creation of simple applications such as video games, virtual physics experiments or pedagogical math illustrations. It relies on an intuitive graphical interface and language which allows the user to program a set of mobile objects (possibly through a network). It is available in public domain at http://mobinet.inrialpes.fr for Linux,Windows and MacOS, and originated in a collaboration with the EVASION project-team.

The main aim of MobiNet is to allow young students at high school level with no programming skills to experiment, with the notions they learn in math and physics, by modeling and simulating simple practical problems, and even simple video games. This platform has been massively used during the Grenoble INP "engineer weeks" since 2002: 150 senior high school pupils per year, doing a 3 hour practice. This work is partly funded by Grenoble INP. Various contacts are currently developed in the educational world. Besides "engineer weeks", several groups of "monitors" PhD students conducts experimentations based on MobiNet with a high scool class in the frame of the courses. Moreover, presentation in workshops and institutes are done, and a web site repository is maintained. A web version is currently under preliminary developpement.