THE URBAN GAME MOBIGEO: STUDENTS PERCEPTIONS ON POTENTIAL AND CONSTRAINTS OF AN MOBILE OUTDOOR EDUCATION

摘要

Mobile technologies are increasingly rooted in society and, therefore, intuitively, teachers begin to take advantage of devices that students carry with them daily in a logic of 1:1 bring your own device (BYOD). In fact, it becomes crucial to use this media to promote/increase new pedagogical activities to motivate and challenge students to acquire and discover knowledge. Our research is based in the emergence of a new paradigm for learning, the Mobile Learning that bring to education the advantages of "just in time" and "anywhere", breaking the classroom barriers and extending the process of teaching and learning to a custom context where the virtual and real worlds merge. This was the inspiration to create the MobiGeo, an Urban Game, for Geography teaching, that arose from a partnership between the Basic School ("Agrupamento de Escolas de Vila Verde") and the Knowledge House of Vila Verde (Casa do Conhecimento de Vila Verde). In this Urban Game participated all classes of the 7* grade of the Public Basic School, a total of 173 students (82 boys and 91 girls), with ages between 12 and 15 years. Each school class was divided in four teams - GeoFronteirs, PDA, Support and Wallpaper - and the geographical area was bounded between the school and the Central Square of Vila Verde a space with wireless system (Digital Plaza). Mobile phones were also available for each of the teams to communicate and receive instructions of the path to go (GPS) and the tasks were associated with QR codes. In the end of the route, the team that concluded all the points and performed all the tasks had to raise the European Union flag as a symbol of victory. The theoretical background of the Urban Game designed in our research is based in four pillars: Constructivism (the student takes an active role in the production/construction of knowledge), the Situated Learning (authentic context is a sponsor of knowledge); Connectivism (which puts mobile devices as a source of connections available for the acquisition of knowledge) and Conversation Theory. The research question that guided the project was to understand whether the implementation of an urban game -Mobigeo - that enhanced collaboration and interaction among peers could influence the process of learning geography in an outdoor education context. After reviewing emerging research on mobile learning, this article presents the results of two open questions of the survey to the participants in the activity. To assess students' perceptions on the MobiGeo the researchers developed and validated a questionnaire based on the motivational model of Kirkpatrick (leveM) and embraces three major dimensions: Motivation/Interest, Interaction and Perceived Learning. Data obtained allow us to conclude that Urban Games, like MobiGeo are potential agents of motivation and interaction that predispose students to learn geography in informal learning environments. Mobile technologies offer a range of learning experiences that may involve and effectively involve students in learner-centred activities. We can also say that the success of Urban Game MobiGeo was due to the challenge of finding out what is hidden in the georeferenced location using mobile phones to uncover the information needed to conclude the game. In fact, students said that "the use of mobile phone motivated the commitment of the group" also assumed the strengths of MobiGeo, "the points are located at the GPS", 'the use of QR codes" and "have used wireless internet". So, we suggest that the roles of teacher and student should not be abandoned but recycled and adapted to this new reality that requires more personalized and diverse activities of learning.