Chapter IV
Maga Vitta:
Conversational Ecological Agent in
an Interactive Collective Construction
Environment for Basic Education
Margarete Axt
Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil
Magalí Teresinha Longhi
Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil
Paloma Dias Silveira
Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil
Lucas Nunes Guimarães
Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil
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This chapter presents the development of CIVITAS project for the construction of virtual cities, particu-
larly 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.