Education innovator Futurelab today launched a free resource for schools that combines hands-on activity with state-of-the-art mobile technology to support learning that is both engaging and stimulating. Create-A-Scape enables young people aged 10 and upwards to learn while exploring their surroundings, using PDA handheld computers.
The Create-A-Scape website (www.createascape.org.uk) provides a set of resources to enable teachers and pupils to create digitally-enhanced, personalised learning experiences known as mediascapes. A collection of location-sensitive sounds and images that are ‘attached to’ the local landscape, these are created using the mediascape authoring toolkit, a pervasive media software developed at HP Laboratories in Bristol. It is rather like overlaying a digital canvas onto the every day world. They can then be experienced in the outside world using mobile technology. Users can create a range of experiences from tours of discovery to art installations – the only constraint is imagination.
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 Alphonsus Crater, found on the Earth’s moon, superimposed onto a school playing field. Students, equipped with their 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. Alan comments, “I hope the moonwalk will capture the imagination of teachers and students alike, and encourage schools to use Create-A-Scape to create their own mediascapes.”
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 the enthusiasm to explore the outdoors!
Steve Sayers, Strategy Director at Futurelab, said, “Create-A-Scape will enable schools to move away from classroom-centred learning and into the learner’s own environment. Thanks to support from the DfES, schools are now able to use this innovative resource for free.”
Phil Stenton, anager of the Technology and Lifestyle Integration Department at HP Labs Bristol said “the mediascape technology has a variety of potential applications. At HP Labs, we’ve trialled the technology in the city of Bristol in various projects for tourism and educational purposes. It has been fantastic to see the technology play a real role in bringing education to life.”
