Participative Teaching with Mobile Devices and Social Networks for K-12 Children

This article details a set of participatory pedagogical experiments conducted within a research grant PN II IDEI ("Time Maps. Real communities, virtual worlds, experimented pasts") performed with the purpose of helping rural communities in identifying their cultural heritage and transmitting it to the younger generations by means of modern IT technologies, including web 2.0. In a Danubian rural community, several points of archaeological interest (POIs) were identified, which were then included in a geographic Augmented Reality application for smartphones and tablets. Subsequently, the geographic data were collected from the archaeological site by the K-12 children, under the coordination of an academic staff member of the National University of Arts in Bucharest, and stored on their devices using Google Maps. The augmented information provided on the site was annotated and shared with other K-12 children, through different social networks sites (SNS) and content postings. This first stage experiment was extended to the development of a social learning environment complementary to the educational site (www.timemaps.net) to support the transmission of several traditional technologies (textile, ceramic, glass) in a collaborative manner. We consider that our experiments can significantly increase the visibility of the information pertaining to the identity of target places and communities among the younger generation. A mobile-learning paradigm, in combination with web 2.0 technologies, was the support for a distributed and low-cost platform for communication and collaboration. Social networks linked the archaeological heritage and the academic research with the larger community of rural K-12 children. The article analyzes this platform as a solution for creating, collecting and sharing educational content, and presents conclusions on using social media for effective blended learning and transmittal of the cultural heritage.