An enticing storyline, a game that takes
place outside, authentic problems to solve,
and mobile devices with multimedia content
all converge to make this AR math simulation the best class of the day for these
middle school students.
MIT has also recently developed
TaleBlazer ( education.mit.edu/
projects/taleblazer), a web-based AR
game development tool similar to
ARIS, for teachers and students to
make and share games using iPad,
iPhone, or Android smartphones.
Time to Play
So you’ve created your AR game and
are ready to unveil it to your students!
Yes, it will be fun, but there are also
some things you’ll want to keep in
mind:
Student engagement. Students were
highly engaged during Alien Contact. One teacher noted, “My classes
… love to chit-chat and talk, but
throughout this entire week and a
half, they were focused, they were
really engaged, they really wanted
to figure out what the problem was.”
Students especially liked working in
teams while maintaining their own
role expertise. Other appealing aspects of the simulation that students
mentioned include using multimedia,
being outdoors, using mobile devices,
using GPS to track students’ movements, collaborating, and engaging in
tasks that they perceive as authentic.
Teachers often noted with surprise
that their least motivated and successful students were the most engaged
with Alien Contact.
Technical issues. At times, however,
technology can temper student en-
gagement. For example, students in
our simulations often had to refresh
their devices because of disruptions
in GPS signals. Additionally, due to
built-in GPS inaccuracies, students
would access the same character at
slightly different locations. As a result,
we had to provide physical, along with
virtual, location markers for tasks
requiring precision, which required
students to measure the distance from
the virtual impact crater to the furthest
piece of debris. Also, some devices’
screens and speakers are not intended
for outside use. Our students would
sometimes have to hold their machines
to their ears to hear videos, which
caused them to lose key visual infor-
mation, or they would have to squint
to see the images in the sun’s glare.
