1 ED-MEDIA 2008, 1 de Julho Children as Authors of Georeferenced Multisensory Information: Towards the Design of Simulation and Editing Tools for an Educational Context Maria João Silva Carlos Brigas Cristina Azevedo Gomes Maria José Marcelino Cristina Gouveia

2 Summary The project Goals of the present work Related Work Methodology Browsing and authoring activities Conclusions

3 The project The project explores georeferenced multisensory information to improve the quality of learning in primary schools Multisensory Geographic information Collaboration Learning in context Multiple representations Multiple views Improve the learning of complexity

4 Goals of the present work To understand how elementary school children interact with : –a multimedia simulation tool to explore georeferenced multisensory information while studying environmental problems –a multimedia editing tool to explore and create georeferenced multisensory information To invite children to be explorers and creators of multisensory information in georeferenced environmental contexts

5 Related Work (Silva et al. 2003): a case library of multisensory messages integrated in a collaborative website, which allowed to geo-reference the citizen collected data and used the metaphor of postcards to create messages. HyConExplorer (Bouvin et al. 2005): a spatial hypermedia system to improve learning that allowed children, aged 11 to 14, to georeference visual and aural information. A New Sense of Place? (Williams et al. 2005): children, aged 9 to 10, used a GPS to create and explore outdoor soundscapes, which were afterwards edited. Nature Talk (Ohashi et al. 2006): children were able to record sounds and position information to create a virtual sound map (sounds were layered on GoogleMaps). Simulation, multimedia and geographic information tools to explore and georeference sensations, such as colors, heat, humidity and vibration are not sufficiently used in elementary schools.

6 Methodology Two workshops: Used a curriculum-focused design, which is a variant of Druin's cooperative inquiry (Rode et al. 2003) Included a whole class (20 children, aged 9-10) from an elementary school in Viseu, a city located in inner central Portugal An appealing context to engage teachers and children in the activities of the workshops was created by a call from the University of Lisbon inviting all Portuguese elementary schools to create stories on the curricular topic of “climate and climate change”.

7 Methodology Activities Presentation of the “climate change” challenge using georeferenced sensory information. Exploration of climate change issues using a multisensory simulation tool: Simulkid. Creation of stories on climate change by the children using geo-referenced multisensory information. –Google Earth was the virtual globe used to engage children in geographic information browsing. – Kid Pix® Deluxe 4 was the multimedia edition tool selected, due to its ease of use and diversity of tools, as well as to its structure of customizable libraries and cliparts.

8 Users can control the increase and decrease of temperature and precipitation. Simulkid displays colors, animations, icons and sounds to convey information such as the rise of temperature or precipitation, the increase of wind speed, the water flooding houses or the drought of fertile fields. Browsing and authoring activities: Multisensory Simulation Tool Simulkid portrays a watershed in Portugal and presents the probable impacts of climate change in this region.

9 Children showed no difficulty with the interpretation of the multisensory cues “Look at the color of the sky. It’s raining heavier.” “The river is rising” “The snow has melted. Look at the color of the mountains” “The green field is now brown” Using a Multisensory Simulation Tool Browsing and authoring activities: Multisensory Simulation Tool

10 Browsing and authoring activities: Creating Stories on Climate Change

11 Browsing and authoring activities: Creating Stories on Climate Change

12 Using icons to represent sensations Browsing and authoring activities: Representing Sensations Icons adapted from: Tullet, H. (2005). The five senses. London: Tate Publishing.

13 Conclusions The use of multisensory information to teach and learn environmental phenomena is a meaningful strategy To georeference information also contributes to increase the quality of learning Google Earth is a powerful and easy to use virtual globe that creates engagement and enthusiasm The creation of multisensory information by children benefits from the exploration of case-based libraries with images, sounds, animations and icons with multiple levels of abstraction

14 Thank you! Maria João Silva Instituto Politécnico do Porto, Escola Superior de Educação do Porto, Porto, Portugal, Cristina Azevedo Gomes Instituto Politécnico de Viseu, Centro de Estudos em Educação, Tecnologias e Saúde, Viseu, Portugal Carlos Brigas Instituto Politécnico da Guarda, Escola Superior de Educação, Guarda, Portugal Maria José Marcelino Universidade de Coimbra, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, Dep. Engenharia Informática, Coimbra, Portugal, Cristina Gouveia Ydreams, Caparica, Portugal,