MuseumScrabble

Abstract

Mobile technology has created new possibilities for location-based playful learning experiences. This article describes the MuseumScrabble mobile game, aimed at children visiting a historical museum. The game requires that the players explore the museum and link abstract concepts with physical artefacts using a mobile device. The focus of this article is on the interaction design process and the subsequent observations made during field evaluation of the game. Design principles that guide the development of such a game are presented and concern playfulness, learning, social interaction, physical aspects of the game and flow between physical and digital space. This article explores how these design principles are reflected in the study and how problem-solving strategies and collaboration and competition patterns are developed by children in this multi-player educational game.

An architecture to support design of context-aware mobile applications

“…The game was tested in the field as discussed by (Sintoris et al, 2009) with the participation of children of the typical user age, see Figure 32. The game was played on a scenario that contained 9 topics, each with 4 hints.…”

“…Table 8: Post activity questionnaire (scale 1-5, 1 being fully disagree, 5: fully agree). From (Sintoris et al, 2009) Towards Definition of a Framework: Design and Development of a Number of Applications A physical interaction is logged when the player presses the hard button on the PDA in order to scan the RFID tag of an exhibit. A physical interaction also reveals the exact position of the player at the time of the scan.…”

A cognition-centered personalization framework for cultural-heritage applications

“…The participants could either choose to adjust a cultural-heritage application that they had designed in the past or they could adjust a cultural-heritage application provided by the research team. The provided application was MuseumScrabble [Sintoris et al 2012], which is a location-sensitive multiplayer mobile game for museums and it is played by competing players who use their mobile devices to scan museum exhibits and link them to cultural-heritage themes. The other cultural-heritage applications were also based on visual search tasks supporting either exploratory (e.g., an augmented museum tour) or structured tasks (e.g., a virtual cultural-heritage game with specific sub-tasks that the player should follow to complete a game level).…”

Técnicas de computación social e información contextual para el desarrollo de actividades de aprendizaje colaborativo

“…Sin embargo, las aplicaciones basadas en el concepto de e-learning presentan el contenido generalmente de forma estática, sin tener en cuenta la experiencia y conocimientos previos, así como las habilidades o metas que los estudiantes deben adquirir o alcanzar (Alvarez et al, 2011;Baylari and Montazer, 2009;Echeverría et al, 2006;. En este sentido, la aplicación de los nuevos recursos tecnológicos puede mejorar la gestión de contenido del proceso de aprendizaje, de modo que pueda ser dinámico y personalizable a las necesidades de cada alumno o del escenario en el que se desarrolla la actividad (Baylari and Montazer, 2009;FitzGerald, 2012;Hyndman et al, 2011;Margetis et al, 2012b;Sintoris et al, 2012).…”

“…El uso de información contextual en los procesos de aprendizaje se denomina Aprendizaje Sensible al Contexto (Context-aware Learning) (Laine and Joy, 2009a;Yang, 2006a). El conocimiento de la información contextual puede favorecer la adquisición de conocimientos por parte de los alumnos (Sintoris et al, 2012;. Sin embargo, la obtención de la información contextual se convierte a menudo en el gran caballo de batalla de estos trabajos (Basaeed et al, 2007;FitzGerald, 2012;Laine and Joy, 2009a;Yang, 2006a).…”