This paper discusses an early prototype aiming at providing teachers with means for configuring connected objects that can be used for assessing the understanding and the creative reworking of children's learning. In order to do that, we support teachers in defining the information flow between the connected objects and the interactive manipulation events considered relevant for the assessment. Considering that in the last years classrooms have been more and more equipped with different technological supports, we propose to use them in a more customisable way, helping both teachers and students in making lessons more enjoyable and pleasant. We focus on already available and low cost technologies, since more advanced ones may have a high impact on school budgets. Due to this, we propose an approach that uses modular and low cost components that could be embedded in different physical objects and easily replicated by schools with a low investment.
It is a common belief that people learn while studying and
that testing is needed since teachers and educators must
somehow measure what actually has been learned. Indeed,
in order to improve learning it is usual to spend more time
and effort improving teaching rather than testing.
On the contrary, Roediger [
Today, teachers can choose among dozens of available learning assessment tools and they can easily create their tests by using free or paid web material. We are currently studying a solution for creating assessment exercises that combine physical exercises and question for rehearsing lesson concepts.
Our main idea is to provide an end-user development (EUD) environment that would enable teachers to use cheap hardware for sensing physical objects, for creating learning games that would take advantage from both the physical and the digital world.
The teacher, through the support of the EUD environment, defines the game rules and the playing field. From such definition, the environment will suggest how to configure a set of smart modules for supporting the game. The smart modules will be different low-cost sensors and hardware devices, that will be automatically configured for receiving the data. In the rest of the paper, we will describe a small pilot study for a multiple answer question game.
In our first prototype we built a simple platform that manages both the creation and the game experience. It allows teachers to create a single ten-item quiz, where each item is a question which has only one correct answer. We envision the developed tool as freely available online where teachers can create their own questions thus sharing their tests. Users, browsing among the available categories in the system can select which of them are suitable for the lesson, and, if necessary, they can create a set of questions combining more categories by simply removing or adding single items.
Each module is designed as a square of a rigid material (i.e. wood or plastic) with a 180mm side having a thickness of 10mm. At its centre we find a circular hole with a 10mm diameter. A magnet stripe is placed both on the right and the bottom side, while an iron one is placed on the left and on the top side. These stripes allow teachers to connect them in different configurations. The only constraint for the set-up is that there will be a single module labelled as master while the others will be labelled as slaves. Their smartness come from a combination of two main elements: an Arduino nano micro controller and a near field communication (NFC) reader connected to it. This combination gives to each module the computational ability to read an NFC tag and to send its code to a PC through the master module that continuously retrieves all the information read by the slave modules.
The NFC technology is a set of communication protocols that enable two electronic devices to exchange information by bringing them within a short distance. NFC tags are passive component which can be read, and under some circumstances written to, by an NFC device.
The composed modules create a single block that can be connected to the main PC through an USB cable. From now on, all the data read by the modules will be sent to the system making possible the user interaction. The game requires a initial configuration, in fact the user may insert the number of players and their NFC ID. The association between user and ID is a guided operation; firstly, the system requires the name of the player, secondly the player may bring its physical widgets within four centimetres of the master module. This way the name of the player will be associated to the widget and the given answers will be recorded for the right player.
Even if the default physical widgets are simple foam balls equipped with an NFC tag, teachers can create different ones working together with their students 4.
We describe the usage of these modules for a quiz game, combining them with a screen or a projected surface. Modules can be combined by using the magnet stripes, securing them with an optional frame that can hosts up to four module as shown in figure 1. This smart component allows students to give their answers to the test by using physical widgets equipped with NFC tags. These widgets could have different shapes and materials (it is sufficient that they fit inside the hole placed in the square module) and in our early test we used foam balls placing an NFC tag inside of them. At this point we can associate widgets students/players and the modules represents the available answers for the current question. The system can actually identify the answers given by the players checking their correctness.
In this paper we discussed our idea for creating an EUD environment supporting teachers in developing learning assessment games. We developed a first game prototype for understanding the requirements and technical difficulties in automating the configuration of the physical object sensing hardware.
In the future we would like to implement the environment, focusing on two main parts: the first one is the configuration engine, that will receive the teacher-defined configuration and would generate the instructions for connecting the hardware and generate the code for reading data and playing the game.
The second part is the EUD support, applying the existing state of the art metaphors for defining the data flow, and studying how to represent the start modules in a simple yet precise way the different modules.