fragile oasis

3D Study Maze

The Study Maze is a collection of mazes designed for studying, intended to interconnect into one large "Study Maze." It was conceived on May 25, 2012 by Mindey, as a result of thinking of how to make education as attractive as watching movies, and as addictive as playing computer games. Inherently, the purpose of the Study Maze is to make the learning of study material more enjoying.

Study Maze leverages upon the innate human sense of curiosity. Rather than requiring one to practise and do the homeworks because of the sense of duty, it gives incentives to do the problems because of the wild sense of curiosity: "you want to know what treasures and secrets are hidden behind that door to another room, and what awaits at the end of each tunnel."

Study Maze also capitalizes on a seemingly hard-wired ability of human mind to memorize the roads, by supplying clues in forms of textures and sounds in three-dimensional environment, which work like landmarks for a car driver, and helps to remember the location of the learned material. This learning paradigm has been researeched in adults, and it was found what suggests that even an adult brain hippocampus is very neuroplastic, when it comes to memorization of roadss.

Study Maze may create opportunities to find appropriate employees. A tunnel in the maze may not only end in entering another room. It could end in an employment offer or a job interview, if the set of problems that a player had to solve to get to that tunnel indicates the degree of mastery desired by the employer. The analogy would also work for universities that search for excellent candidate students.

Study Maze creates an opportunity to get scientific and engineering problems solved right inside the maze, without having to employ a person. Simply place your problem in the appropriate place of the maze, where the skills required for solving the problem are expected, and you may significantly increase the chances of having your problem solved by a curious kid or a hacker.

Study Maze creates an opportunity to engage in activity, similar to building and decorating a home, as if to create a cosy environment for family life. In that sense, the activity of creating a room's audiovisual content is sexy, because people who will be studying the room in the future will be influenced by its design choices in a similar way that a mixture of genes from multiple individuals influences the development of a child.

Study Maze is based on a very simple idea, which could have been a reality decades ago. It is a surprise to the author, why it wasn't, as it creates opportunity to tackle numerous problems of science and engineering by millions of kids playing such computer games: with the agility and perseverance of a child, not only their parents would be happy that their kids are learning, but scientists and engineers could turn to them to do the math for their scientific and engineering problems, the solutions of which could benefit everyone leading to new treatments of diseases, health improvement, and new horizons envisioned by the futurists -- perhaps even immortality could be brought much closer.

The Study Maze software 3D Study Maze was written by Mindey (aka Inyuki on Halfbakery). However, it would not be possible without the use of Panda3D game engine, which was designed by Disney for massively multiplayer online game, Toontown; released as free software in 2002, and developed jointly by Disney and Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center.

Study Maze is nearly feature-complete, and already can be used for practical purposes, but many changes and desired, and new features and simplifications still need to be made.