The History Game Part 2

Basic assumptions

Earlier in the year I was speculating about how to implement a mobile exercise using one of the many augmented reality apps that have appeared in the last couple of years. Before I could implement I wanted a smartphone so that I could experiment and this finally happened in June. Although I bought myself a fairly top of the range model, a Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc, I should point out that most new phones these days are smart enough to implement this idea. The other significant factor is that mobile device plans are getting cheaper and often include some data as part of the basic plan so it is no longer so unacceptable to ask people to use data while on the move. In fact this idea requires very little online time.

Experimental group

The next challenge was to find a group to experiment with. So I went to the local village school which my daughters had attended and where I still knew some people. The school was closed down by the local authority two years ago because it was too small and has since gone independent as a Scandinavian free school. Although it gets funding from central government, as well as parents paying fees, money is very tight and so the digital equipment base is very low. But what I was suggesting was that we should use the children’s own devices. I also knew from my time as a parent that the school was very keen on promoting the idea of the outdoors as an extension of the classroom and that was one reason why I thought they might like the idea.

When I finally approached the school I was incredibly lucky because it just so happened that they were facing a challenge which my suggestion could help. As a small school, the classes are mixed age and in their oldest class, the very oldest 7thh grade pupils needed to go out every two weeks or so for an age related exercise which left the younger sixth grade pupils in the class and the teachers did not want the younger pupils to get ‘ahead’ of the older pupils during this time. Luckily for me this was the history class.

The activity

Research: So my proposal was that the younger pupils could find out more about the history of our small village by going out and noticing buildings and so on, by making use of the local history archive which is partly on the web and partly in a building housed by willing volunteers who would be prepared to find photos and other documents for the children as well as in classroom sessions. And in the end, the class teacher also gave her class homework to interview their elderly relatives over the autumn break to give them additional information about the past of the village.

Although the focus in this case was history, it could be on any number of other topics, such as biology (field observations, identification and so on), geology, archeology, transport, culture and so on.

Game planning: Once the class had done their research guided by the teacher, the next stage was to work out how to make this into a game. At this point, it is very useful to know which AR tool you are going to be using so that you know what is possible and what is not. After a great deal of research over the summer I had chosen SCVNGR as the most promising tool and so I knew that in SCVNGR you could add short texts, images, audio files, video files and web links. So although in theory the pedagogy comes first at all times, in practice you have to be prepared to adapt the pedagogy to fit the tools available. I had for example tested other AR tools which promised that you could add all these different media but in practice allowed very little or did not allow the media to be easily presented in the form of a chain of activities.

What is mobile?

So in what way are mobile devices used in this activity? In fact most of the time is spent in learning the background facts and planning the mobile treasure hunt. During the research phase pupils can use their mobile phones to take pictures of possible way posts in the treasure hunt or to make notes either in text or audio format. Back at school they plan the route, the number of questions and the content of the questions. Then they need to actually produce the question material which could be short texts, images, audio or video files or any combination of these. The question materials are then uploaded to SCVNGR using their simple input webpage. This is probably best done on a computer. It is not until the treasure hunt needs to be tested that there is any need to be online via our mobile device. Click on the image below to get a larger image of the SCVNGR input page.

Initial pupil reaction

The pupils were very keen on the idea and couldn’t wait to get started. When I presented the idea to the class teacher she was immediately very keen mainly because it solved a problem for her and she recognised that her pupils probably would be too. During my presentation of this to the Polish Moodle Moot someone commented that the teacher was brave to take on the idea but I think that the reality is that she recognised the power of the machines in her pupils pockets and was glad to be able to make use of them in a targeted and pedagogically sound manner. This was a very pragmatic decision.

The pupils have done their initial research and are now finalising the questions. Here is an example of one of the questions they have devised which I have translated into English and which shows how it appears on my phone:

Objections

Not every pupil has a smart phone. That is true but almost every pupil has either a smart phone or a smart mp3 player. The activity is deal for group work and all the teacher needs to do is to ensure that there is at least one device able to take photos, videos and make audio recordings in each group. In a Danish school there is no danger of this being a problem.

Data costs: Most mobile phone plans now include some free data transfer in the monthly fee. The data transfer is only needed when playing or testing the game after all the question material has been uploaded through a computer so this is not a problem. This is certainly true in Denmark as well as the UK, Poland and Spain and I guess in many other countries too.

Mobile devices are banned: In this activity the devices are used mainly outside the school. The only use inside the school would be to transfer files to a computer or pendrive for later editing and upload to SCVNGR. One suggestion is to change the rules so that mobile devices may be used with the teacher’s permission.

Timing

I think that this activity can be very elastic in the amount of time it takes. It is up to the teacher how much research they think their pupils need to establish the basic facts needed for the game and then how much planning time is needed to work out a route and question content. When preparing the multimedia content the general rule is that the more you plan, the less you will have to edit afterwards. For language teachers practicing a piece to camera several times before making the final recording is probably a very valuable exercise in itself. In the end, as with many pedagogical activities, it is the process which is more important than the end result. But in my case, the end result will be a history treasure hunt game around the village which the absent pupils will try out. In most other situations, it would probably be the goal that at least two games are produced by different groups so that the groups can try out each other’s game.

Why did I choose SCVNGR?

In SCVNGR a question is called a challenge and several challenges can be put together to make a trek. In my activity the treasure hunt would be a trek. My reasons for choosing SCVNGR included the following:

• because they seemed to have a simpler interface than the others I tried.
• they have a built in treasure hunt feature which they call treks.
• uploading and playing multimedia on your phone works
• you can include more open-ended questions such as taking and submitting of a photo of what you see when you are in the correct place
• they are sympathetic to educators (you can ask for more than the initial free 5 challenges for example)
• their app works in Android and iOS, the two most common mobile interfaces

Part 3

In Part 3 we will find out how the game went.

My Polish Moodle Moot presentation