19 September 2006
Mediascapes stimulate learning
Education innovator Futurelab has launched a free resource for schools that combines hands on activity with the latest mobile technology. Create-A-Scape is said to support learning that is both engaging and stimulating, enabling young people aged 10 and upwards to learn whilst exploring their surroundings.
The Create-A-Scape website provides a set of resources to enable teachers and pupils to create digitally enhanced, personalised learning experiences called mediascapes. A collection of location sensitive sounds and images ‘attached to’ the local landscape are created using the mediascape authoring toolkit, a pervasive media software developed at HP Laboratories in Bristol. Users can create a range of experiences – from tours of discovery to art installations.
Alan Beecham, secondary strategy consultant (ICT) at Education Bradford has used Create-A-Scape to produce a ‘moonwalk’ mediascape. The moonwalk is based on a map of the moon’s Alphonsus Crater, superimposed onto a school playing field. Students, equipped with PDAs and two way radios, set off to explore the ‘crater’ with a number of tasks to complete before their ‘oxygen supplies’ run out. These tasks include finding the volume of moon rocks and measuring a moon dust footprint.
The Create-A-Scape website contains everything that is needed to get started – all that schools require is a pc, a pda handheld computer and enthusiasm.
(www.createascape.org.uk)
Author
Graham Pitcher
Supporting Information
Websites
http://www.createascape.org.uk
http://www.hpl.hp.com
Companies
Hewlett-Packard Laboratories
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