In the Hunting of the Snark game groups of children worked in pairs to hunt an elusive, virtual creature called the Snark, in a large interactive environment. The Snark never appears in its entirety but sometimes as an emotion and other times as a personality. It also only appears for short periods of time in a variety of magical places, including water, a cave and in the air.
When they have discovered all the virtual objects, they are then transformed into physical objects. The Snark appears depending on what actions the children perform using the physical objects. For example, they can feed it food tokens, fly with it wearing a magic jacket and walk with it in different environments (e.g. a jungle). The Snark responds and shows aspects of itself in a variety of tantalizing forms. Searing animations and moving sounds appear and disappear. While interacting with the Snark the children have to capture as much of the Snark’s behaviour and personality as possible.
Trials and analysisWe ran a number of trials with children ranging from 7-10 years, demonstrating that the children were able to become engrossed in playful learning. Analysis of the children's experiences with the Snark game suggest that they are able to articulate ‘causality’ concepts of ‘making the invisible visible’, ‘bringing the far to the near’ and ‘moving through traversals of physical/virtual spaces’ in a variety of ways.
|
