Abstract
Through advances in game engines and tablet technology, experiences that formerly required a field trip can now be brought into the classroom. Two interactive experiences, “Hello Ocean” and “Arctic Stars: The Far North”, were developed to bring a swim-through exploration of a Caribbean reef and a walk-through experience of an Alaskan tundra to an elementary school located far from an ocean and far from Alaska. The experiences were tested for their appeal and whether they encouraged children ages 8-11 to learn more about the respective biomes. The paper reports on various formative playtests with children and documents how the experiences evolved over time as a result of those playtests, as well as the unique attributes of the two biomes which led to different interaction styles for the two experiences. The reef was navigated well using the gyroscope in tablets to change the virtual world camera view by manipulating the tablet position in physical space. The tundra used a virtual joystick to see the activity in a sparser landscape with less need for up/down movement. High navigational freedom was important to both experiences.
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Christel, M.G. et al. (2015). Bringing Biome Exploration into the Classroom Through Interactive Tablet Experiences. In: Göbel, S., Ma, M., Baalsrud Hauge, J., Oliveira, M., Wiemeyer, J., Wendel, V. (eds) Serious Games. JCSG 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9090. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19126-3_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19126-3_8
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