This interactive event will partly simulate the approach of developing playful learning environments enabled by digital technologies, which seeks to bridge learning experiences across in and out of school environments. During the event, we will use "dinosaurs" as our motivating anchor of various school contents. The organizers and facilitators are involved in such efforts in their projects and the theme of dinosaurs has widespread appeal to public across different age groups, social and cultural backgrounds and professional interests. We will engage participants in the emerging discourse on how to bridge informal and formal learning contexts, and have them experience playing and learning with various games and toys that have potentials for facilitating such boundary crossing. Participants will have an opportunity to explore ways to do so using their own narratives, digital games, mixed reality technologies, and other hands-on activities.

PARTICIPATION

If you would like to participate in this event, please let us know by sending an email to beaumie.kim@nie.edu.sg with the subject <ICCE09 participation Interactive Event>. Please let us know your name and a short description of your interest, and also indicate the completion of registration for the main conference.

Please note that this event does not require an additional participation fee.

Organizers/Facilitators

Beaumie Kim, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (beaumie.kim@nie.edu.sg)

Tomotsugu Kondo, The Open University of Japan (tkondo@code.u-air.ac.jp )

Alexis Pang, Ministry of Education, Singapore (alexis_pang@moe.gov.sg )

Jason Lee, National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (jason@creaturesville.com )

EVENT INTERACTIONS

The discourse among participants and facilitators will be around questions such as:

1. How could the various technologies, with their own particular (and general) affordances, be configured and re-configured (by teacher/curator and/or learners/participants) to enable learning to be enhanced?
2. How participants interact and navigate through the different dinosaur playing fields (real/virtual spaces)?
3. How can teachers use such an approach for the design of their own learning environment in the classroom?
4. How do you connect between informal (museum, games) learning and classroom learning? What role should researchers play?

Some of the technologies that participants will explore include:

1. Voyage to the Age of Dinosaurs (VAD) game: This 3D online multiplayer game is a prototype for learning of dynamic Earth System and promoting systems thinking. Using dinosaur fossils, players move back and forth the present world and past world of early cretaceous to complete various quests.
2. Museum display system: This is a mixed reality program based on a fragmentary dinosaur fossil and/or paper craft dinosaurs In this system, using a handheld pc with a camera allows replication of the look of the dinosaur, overlaying the actual skeleton. In this session, participants can color their own dinosaurs on the computer or on the paper. When you dig up a dinosaur and assemble the dinosaur skeleton at a station, you can superimpose the dinosaur drawing you colored over the skeleton.
3. PlayStationPortable (PSP): This program is about the evolution from fishes to men. In a museum, a visitor walks though the exhibits answering questions appeared on a PSP. The device was developed to help visitors to understand the exhibits better and enjoy them more. There are several topics on the menu such as dinosaur evolution and human evolution. In some stops, you look at the exhibit through a scope and view some mixed reality animation superimposed on a stationary object. In another stop, there are some fish fossils. In this session, PSP is used to navigate participants/groups to move from a station to another.
4. Video clips of informant design workshop activities and other museum activities: The design workshop included various hands-on activities to engage participants in idea generations. There are also various museum activities with or without the use of these digital technologies. In the interest of limited time and resources, we will bring video clips of activities that took place during the design workshop and interactions from on-going museum exhibitions.