Maga Vitta: Conversational Ecological Agent in an Interactive Collective Construction Environment for Basic Education

Abstract

This chapter presents the development of CIVITAS project for the construction of virtual cities, particularly with regards to Maga Vitta, which is an interactive agent ecologically concerned as the collective city develops. CIVITAS project consists of four environments: a creativity environment, an environment for interactive distance communication, study and research environment, and educational game-like environment, in order to give better pedagogical support to both, dialogical processes, and sociocognitive learning processes of students in primary school. The Maga Vitta belongs to the creativity environment of CIVITAS, and is an affective, embodied, conversational agent with an ethical point of view based on respect and solidarity relations amongst the city inhabitants and a regulating ecological pattern. She recognizes the user’s actions and express emotions as it follows the user, offering support, advice, deciding tasks, and memorizing the user’s actions during the construction of the virtual city under development in the CIVITAS pedagogical environment.