eMapps.com: Motivating Active Participation of Primary Schoolchildren in Digital Online Technologies for Creative Opportunities through Multimedia.
The project investigated the use by school children of mobile technologies (handheld PCs, PDAs, smartphones) in teaching and learning. It was funded under the European Commission's (EC) Information Society Technologies (IST) 6th Framework Programme (FP6), and ran from October 2005 to March 2008.
The focus was on demonstrating how games and mobile technologies can be combined to provide new and enriching experiences for children in the school curriculum and beyond. Its work concentrated on Europe's New Member States (NMS) and school children in the age group 9-12. It was to support creativity in the classroom and outside and will contribute to practice for developing new teaching methodologies.
Recognising a natural alliance between learning and personal mobile technology, eMapps.com devised a new form of training using games that were played 'live' in the individual's territory on a new generation of handheld mobile devices using Internet, GPRS/3G, GPS, SMS and Multimedia Message Service (MMS) technologies for learning while gaming.
Many of the skills valuable for successful game play, and recognised by both teachers and parents, are as yet only implicitly valued within a school context. In future, learning will move increasingly from the classroom and into the learner's environments, both real and virtual. On a cognitive level, play encourages the development of our concepts about the world. By toying with objects and ideas through playful experimentation we develop an understanding of the physical world and our place within it. But as games increase in complexity and freedom, they will be able to accommodate many different playing styles and personal goals, mirroring the inner dynamics of the player's personality.
Schools in eight of the New Member States developed learning games in the subjects of history and geography in which places or objects were identified and marked on an interactive map, thus creating a ‘living map of Europe’.
The partners on eMapps.com are:-
- Cross Czech a.s. (Coordinator), Czech Republic
- CIBERESPACIO SL, Spain
- MDR PARTNERS, UK
- CERLIM, MMU, UK
- European Schoolnet (EUN)
- Czech E-learning Network, Czech Republic
- elfa, s.r.o., Slovak Republic
- UNIVERZA V LJUBLJANI, Slovenia
- Institute of Mobile Technologies, Lithuania
- Tiger Leap Foundation, Estonia
- Berzsenyi College, Hungary
- SCDA Mezazile, Latvia
- International Center for Information Management Systems Services, Poland
Two schools will work with each of 6 to 13 above, i.e. in New Member States of the EU.
Project web site www.emapps.com
For further details contact Geoff Butters:
CERLIM
The Manchester Metropolitan University
Department of Information and Communications
Geoffrey Manton Building
Rosamond Street West
Off Oxford Road
Manchester M15 6LL
Tel: 0161 247 6142
Email: g.butters@mmu.ac.uk