Educational Geo-Caching

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Institute for Development of Educational Technologies

Geocaching, Geotagging, Flickr,WikiWiki, Web-blogs, and Live

Journal in Education:

New Generation of Learning Projects of City Streets and

Internet Communities

Moscow, 2006


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Patarakin E.D., Yastrebtzeva E.N.Geocaching, Geotagging, Flickr, WikiWiki, Web-blogs, and

Live Journal in education: New Generation of learning projects of

city streets and network communities. oscow.: Institute for development of Educational Technologies, 2006. 34 .

This practical guidance has been created on the basis of learning materials of educational network community of K-12teachers and pre-service teachers, who are participants of IntelTeach for the Future Program. The key project that participants of thenetwork community develop is creation and investigation of usagemodels of school encyclopedia and digital map of Russian cities andtowns. The project implies collective usage of public Internetservices and a variety of play and study activities that are connectedwith mobile devices, such as handhelds, GPS-navigators, cell phones,video cameras, digital photo cameras, and other systems whichintegrate all the above functions.

For educationalists, who are involved in project basedlearning and research work with schoolchildren and universitystudents using up-to-date digital technologies and Internet-basedservices.

This publication was made with the support from Intel Teach to the

Future Program and can be distributed free of charge.

E.Patarakin, .Yastrebtzeva, 2006

Institute for Development of Educational Technologies, 2006

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List of Contents:CITY STREETS LEARNING PROJECTS ........................................................4

GPS AND GPS RECEIVERS.................................................................................7

USING OF GPS RECEIVER IN BRIEF ...............................................................................8

USING GPS RECEIVERS ...................................................................................10

GEOCACHING ..........................................................................................................10GEOTAGGING .........................................................................................................12

BLOGS AND LIVE JOURNALS ........................................................................14

BLOG .....................................................................................................................14

LIVE JOURNAL .......................................................................................................15HOW TO JOIN THE COMMUNITY IN BRIEF .......................................................................16

FLICKR..................................................................................................................17

HOW TO SHOW YOUR CITY TO COMMUNITY IN BRIEF ......................................................18

WIKIWIKI.............................................................................................................20

SPECIAL W IKIW IKI IN BRIEF .....................................................................................22

CITY STREETS LEARNING PROJECTS IN INTEL TEACH FOR THEFUTURE PROGRAM ..........................................................................................23

NETWORK RESOURCES LINKS:....................................................................28

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City streets learning projects Extended reality is first of all an opportunity to seethe world through another persons eyes

Kim Veltman

This practical guidance has been created on the basis of learning materials of educational network community of school anduniversity teachers, who are participants of Intel Teach for theFuture Program. The key project that participants of the network community develop is creation and use of school encyclopedia and

digital map of Russian cities and towns. The project impliescollective use of public network services and a variety of play andstudy activities that are connected with mobile devices, such ashandhelds, GPS-navigators, cell phones, video cameras, digital photocameras, and other systems integrating all the above functions.

Due to development of digital technologies teaching practiceadopts devices and tools that help schoolchildren extract and use dataduring walks and traveling. Wide spread of computers and mobiletechnologies allows to incorporate various open sites beyond schoolwalls in the teaching process. Nowadays city parks, squares andstreets turn into school classes. We used to know that all these placeswere also involved in learning process, but now we can consolidateand integrate them in a common learning context.

Quite recently school learning activities in the open and studyin computer laboratories were separated from each other.

Schoolchildren went on excursions to gather data that were broughtto the classroom to build computer models or create presentations.Today mobile devices allow to obtain source digital materials directlyin city streets. Point location, digital photographs, audio and videorecording all this can be conducted using affordable mobile devicesdirectly in city streets.

The main advantage of these devices is that they enable tostore and process information. Besides, they enable access to IT

systems, and promote to peoples collaboration in acting andthinking. Learning activity in city streets using mobile devices can be

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extended due to use of network technologies. As a result, learning project participants do not only act in local context of city or villagestreets, but also become familiar with such global network conceptsas databases, digital maps, and open encyclopedias.

Moscow schoolchildren examine Lyamtsa village using GPS-navigators tomake a site plan, and create a virtual excursion (the photo is provided by

www.redu.ru)

Groups of schoolchildren have been creating virtual learningexcursions in various Russian regions for several years already. As arule, the final form of presenting information is hypertext. Thus,Moscow schoolchildren create virtual hypertext excursions usingmaterials of school expedition 1. At that, information of all villagesites is connected with maximum logical connections. Thus, data of

villagers are connected with information of houses, where they live,their households, folklore texts provided by them, as well as witheach other if people are relatives. The basis of such organization is anoutline plan of the village. Entering houses a user can becomefamiliar with their owners and learn all information connected withthem.

1 Demin I.S., Using computer tools in expedition activities -http://www.researcher.ru/methodics/method/infoteh/a_xr4ko.html

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In 2002 schoolchildren of 14 villages of Nizhny NovgorodRegion worked at creating a collective hypertext. The key idea of acollective hypertext is an opportunity to read the same document inmultiple ways. Additional information that extends the message text

is stored in databases from various villages 2,3. Each object has acorresponding line with the following cells: Name; Image; Text description; Audio; Video . These words have specific meaning for each village. We can call and open this meaning by using a special

program filter or by looking at the text through the village view filter.Texts of the stories were created by teams of schoolchildren and were

performed as compositions One day of a pupil in Nizhny Novgorodvillage Overlapping of the composition texts with database linesallows seeing multidimensional world created from a diversity of links and reminiscences.

2 Patarakin E.D., Using Digital Collections in Learning Communicationshttp :// ifets .ieee .org /russian /depository /v 6_ i2/ html /s 2. html3

Patarakin E.D., Forms of Network Communication -http://ifets.ieee.org/russian/depository/v7_i2/html/6.html

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GPS and GPS receivers In order you who are rooted and confirmed in love,could behold with all Saints what latitude, and longitude, and altitude are.

Paul. To Ephesians. 3. 18

System of global positioning that is employed all over theworld is supported by the USA Department of Defense and is calledGlobal Positioning System, GPS. The system includes 24 satellitesmoving at low altitudes of low earth orbit.

Satellites send radio signals to the Earth. Radio signal power is too weak for the system to be used in close spaces. In places,where the sky is closed by heavy foliage, in mountain ravines, or under high building walls it is almost impossible to use GPS signals.To receive GPS signals, special GPS receivers are used. These arecompact devices, exterior of which resembles that of cell phones. Itis worth mentioning that in the nearest future mobile phones willintegrate GPS receivers, forever setting people free from the fear of getting lost.

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GPS receiver receives signal from GPS in-orbit satellites anddefines its location in any point of the world. How precisely thelocation is defined depends on a number of satellites, signals of which have been received. To define a location, stable signals from at

least three satellites are required. Location preciseness varies usuallyfrom 8 to several dozens meters.

Based on received signals the device informs a user of pointcoordinates (latitude, longitude, and altitude). For example,coordinates of Sergievskaya Church in Nizhny Novgorod are: 56degrees 19 minutes 39 seconds of north latitude and 49 degrees 59minutes 22 seconds of east longitude. In digital representation theyare: N 56 19'39'' and 43 59'22''.

There is a great variety of GPS receivers. Even within amodel line of one manufacturer they differ considerably in terms of their capabilities, such as quantity of channels used to receive signalsfrom satellites, number of points and routes that a receiver can storein its memory. The simplest (and the most affordable) receiver isGarmins 12-channel Etre. The device can store up to 500 pointsand store 1 route consisting of 50 points.

Using of GPS receiver in brief

To the right On and Switch buttons are located:PWR ON/OFF and

Page Page switching, passing from one page to another To the left option buttons are located:

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Up DownSelection confirmedTo define locations and make up a route, it is necessary to fulfill thefollowing actions:1. Switch on the device using PWR button. The following messageappears: Please wait. Searching for satellites sometimes thedevice is searching for satellites for more than 5 minutes.2. Wait until the device informs, Ready to navigation. 20-meter

precision. Use Page button to move to Main Menu Page,1. Menu

2. Mark the point3. Points4. Route5. Ways,5. Settings6. Battery charging

3. Move to Mark Point mode. In the lower part of the screencoordinates appear, e.g., altitude: 167 m, N 56 19.583, E 44 00 430.Confirm the selection

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Using GPS receivers Since advent of GPS devices, various services using their

capabilities have appeared. The services are first of all connectedwith automobile traveling, when a navigator helps follow from oneroute point to another. Travelers and nature explorers in forests,mountains, and water use GPS receivers to mark certain points andmake up routes.

Besides business activities, some gaming and educationalactivities using handheld GPS receivers have been developed. Theseare, first of all, geocaching and geotagging .

Geocaching The first trend, geocaching ("geocaching", from Greek "geo"

- Earth, English "cache" hiding place) is connected with searchingfor caches or guessing riddles about geographical coordinates. Themain idea is that some players hide caches, define their coordinatesusing GPS and present these coordinates in the Internet, while other

players use these coordinates and GPS receivers to search for caches.In educational geocaching players use GPS receiver capabilities tofulfill tasks.

Geocaching can be used not only for training in up-to-datetechnologies, but also for teaching in geography, history, literatureand local lore studies. Play leaders hide small treasures in secret

places and specify their geographical coordinates in the Internet. In

this training model a teacher works as a trailbreaker. He marks pointson the map, gathers materials to check precise location, and breaksthe trail for his students from one point to another. A player or agroup of players are given a list of points to attend. Players mustlocate the points, find objects that are hidden there or answer thequestions. In each point players fulfill simple tasks and make notes intheir route sheet to confirm that the task has been fulfilled.

In summer and autumn of 2005 geocaching educationalgames were held in several Russian cities: Nizhny Novgorod,Irkutsk, Khabarovsk, Novosibirsk, Pskov, Porkhov and Voronezh. In

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all cities games aroused great interest. When organizing the game,main workload and constructive activities are carried out by teachers,who mark the points, make up questions to the points, and place

points along the route.

General route sheet scheme looks the following way:Point coordinates Place description QuestionFor example:

Lat=56.1946 long=43.59,66 In 1506, at that very place Fyodor Litvich hit Nagaisk mirza,Mohammed-Amin's brother in law in chest with a cannonball.

After what is the church in this location named? [Ilya Prorok]Questions that organizers of educational geocaching ask the

players are divided in the four following types:1. Questions for attention and searching activities around aspecified point. Answers to these questions require attention andkeenness of observation. Often, people dont pay attention tosurrounding objects. Thus, the question Find wisemen playing chessnear the location makes people raise their heads and see plasticimages of wisemen at the roof of a house. If a question contains an

attached old photograph, searching for an answer to the questionWhat doesnt correspond to reality in this photo? makes playersfind objects that have either appeared or disappeared in this place.2. Questions for knowledge of historical facts and communicativeactivities . Searching for an answer to the question "What was hereearlier?" implies that participants either know the history of a place,or will be able to address local population and learn why this placeis called the Black Pond, why this square is called Osharskayaetc.3. Questions for local measurements. Answers to these questionscan be obtained by using GPS receiver capabilities. For example, astadium area can be found out by measuring it with a measure tape,or by marking perimeter points and receiving data of distance

between these points from GPS stations.4. Questions marks of educational geocaching game. These are

funny tasks that are communicated from one game to another. From

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the very first educational geocaching game such task was a questionBring a photo of a man in red trousers .

At the finishing stage of educational geocaching game, teams prepare computer presentations telling of the tours.

Geotagging The other game model was used in educational games with

GPS receivers in Ekaterinburg and Saratov. Searching for the mostinteresting points, defining their location, adding digital photographsand stories to the objects were entrusted to players. The task of everyteam was to create virtual traveling over their city for a limited

period of time. Though many locations in teams final presentationswere the same, each traveling was unique. Virtual city tours createdwithin the framework of virtual GPS travelings allow us to connectgeographical locations with ideas and reminiscences of people of different generations. Due to that we can remember that Jupiter concert hall situated at Varnavskaya Street is a former building of theParty Education House, and before 1960-ies a Church of SaintVarvara was situated here. This educational trend of GPS navigator

use is called geotagging .Geotagging (geotagging, from Greek "geo" - Earth,

English "tag" mark, label) is based on using points, where a photograph is taken, as tags for geographical GPS coordinates.Project participants present new photographs in the network,supplying them with description and key words, i.e. tags, accordingto which the photograph can be further located. Using such tags,

players can combine stories and photographs presented in project participants collection with Google digital maps service, and obtainan image of location, where a photograph has been taken, atmaps.Google.com. Geotagging development is connected with usingnew services that were defined as Social Software. These serviceshave considerably simplified process of creating and publishingmaterials in the network. Now every person can not only obtainaccess to digital collections, but also take part in forming his own

network content. Today new content is created by millions of people,who bring new texts, photographs, drawings, musical files in the

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network. At that communication between people ever often takes theform of mutual observation of network activities, not direct exchangeof utterances. Joint actions of participants of todays network communities often have gregarious character. Just like a form of bird

flock is made as a result of each bird fulfilling simple operations,complicated behaviour of network community is formed as a resultof individual behaviour of its members. No one directs actions of individual players, but their simple behaviour is the basis to formcomplex collective behaviour. As a rule, the simpler individual

behaviour guidelines are, the more complex character collective behaviour has. The following network communities can serve anexample of such gregarious communities based on new dataware:

Network communities based on blog technologies that have been introduced to Russian-language users in the form of Live Journal project. In the end of 2004 ACMCommunications devoted to blogs a special issue runningunder the remarkable title Blogosphere.

Encyclopedias of collective authorship based on WikiWikitechnology. Here one should first of all mention

Wikipedia.org project. When using Wiki, a person may not pay attention to using HyperText markup languageinstructions. A text of any collection page is interpreted bythe program as a hypertext. Hypertext page space can bedefined as Wikosphere.

Network communities supporting free public objectclassification. Today the most popular one among suchcollective storages is Flickr.com. Public system of

photograph storage implies user interaction. Since the basisfor classification tools is a tag concept, this sphere of activitycan be defined as Tagosphere.

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Blogs and Live Journals

Blog Blog (web-log) is a collection of records extended via Web-

interface. The term blog stems from Web-logging. According to thedefinition of SlashDot, Blog is a new private way of electroniccommunity evolution. It can serve as an example to show how peopleuse network to build their own communication environment. As arule, these are consecutive records presented by one person, an owner of the blog or journal. These records often contain annotated links to

other resources published in the network.Blogs are distinguished not as much by the records structure,

but by how simple adding a new records is. A user just addresses aWeb-server, passes identification and adds a new record to hiscollection. The server presents information as succession of messages, with the latest messages being placed on the top.Collection structure actually resembles usual consecutive diary or

journal structure.Blog distinguishing features:

Reverse record order the latest records are published on thetop. As a rule, only the latest records are published on the first

page of the blog, while others are available in the archive. Feedback. The blog invites readers to express their opinion.

Feedback invitation is published immediately after the record.In this way a commented blog is similar to the Internet forum.

The only author. As a rule, blog records author is one person.Only blog owners and authors may offer a topic and initiatediscussion.

Integration capabilities. Blog format allows to integratecontent of several authors blogs in one page.

Editing using usual browser. Stable links. Every message published in the blog has its

URL, i.e. address referring to which one can address themessage.

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The last of the above characteristics, i.e. link stability playsan important role when establishing relations between people andmessages. If a message doesnt have a stable network address, it doesnot have network document status. Such message cannot be referred

to from another document, or found by program agents.

Live Journal The most famous and popular among Russian audience is

LiveJournal, LJ for short. LiveJournal technology developers have paid much attention to users acquaintance and interactioncapabilities. As a result, they managed to create a very transparentand consistent mechanism of community formation. UsingLiveJournal capabilities, a person can keep his diary records. He cankeep them without showing to anybody, and the service will stillwork. However the biggest part of live journal capabilities isconnected with interaction and observation for other users messages.These messages are tracked via friendship mechanism. LiveJournalfriendship is rather a specific concept.

Each LiveJournal author forms his own page, where the

messages he writes appear. To add a person in LiveJournal friendslist means just to sign for the news he presents in his network diary.

News subscription from any live journal page looks like forming alist of friends. Adding multiple friends or news stream subscriptions,each live journal user forms the so-called friend list . In other words,at the Author page we can read records kept by the author himself,while Friends page presents us records, to which the author hassubscribed. Thus, a person may not express himself as an author of his own records, but be a very interesting reader, that is, a personwho finds and forms very interesting news streams.

Reading news list can be more useful than keeping ones ownrecords. Due to friend list a person gets an opportunity to arrangenews stream from selected and proven communicants.

There are various friends search engines in live journals. Firstof all, it is search by key words people use to specify their interests.

Remember, key words are basic live journal search engine allowing people with similar interests to find each other and form groups.

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Another way is searching in the list of those who have already beenmarked as friends of your fiends. My friends friend is my friend.The third way is when an experienced live journal author introducesa newcomer to a group of friends. To do that, special Look who is

here messages are published; after that a new live journal member makes mutual friends selecting from reading friends. Sometimes alive journal-based group of people forms a community . Communitymembership provides an opportunity to publish messages in commonnews stream. At community pages there is Join Communitycommand link accompanied with the following note: You are free toleave the Community at any moment .

How to join the community in brief To discuss issues related to organizing network educational

projects using socialware, and, in particular, to organize inter-regional projects using GPS receivers, there is a special live journalcommunity, Virtual Intels http://www.livejournal.com/community/vintel/To join the Community, it is necessary:

To register in the Live Journal.

To publish the first message in your diary. To specify your interests according to which a member is

found by colleagues. To find friends using Vintel and GPS tags To join Vintel Community To publish a message in the community and a link to your

photos at Flickr.com

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Flickr Flickr.com service is designed for storage and further use of

digital photos. A registered system user can locate his photos at aremote server. Free service enables downloading of 20 MB of photos

per month. Each photo can be supplied with a title, brief descriptionand key words for further search. Notes at the photographs can also

be made. If a photo shows several objects (for example, several buildings), any object can be highlighted and supplied withdescription.

A photograph can have a status of a private, family, group or

public one. If the photograph is open to the public, it can be viewed by anybody. Besides, it can be found by key words specified by theuser. Thus, searching by bat key word will provide a list of links toall photos of bats, to which their owners have attached acorresponding tag. The system allows simultaneous search by severalkey words. Another interesting capability is using photo collectionsor individual photos at your site or Live Journal pages. To obtainhtml code of an individual photo link you should only ask the systemto show the photo in different sizes. Html code, which can be copiedto a required page, will be shown under each photo.

This transparent and useful service extends its capabilities.The service allows all users to exchange photos, share photos and

photo tags. A person can not keep any negotiations or social contactswithin the service and still benefit from the service as such. Attachingtags to the photos brings immediate advantages, as tags make easier

searching for photos. In future a user gradually discovers newcapabilities and gains additional benefits from integrating photographs in common communities pools. After you have linked atag to the object, you can immediately see what other photographshave been labeled with the same key words by other people. You canadjust your key words to the most commonly used, or, on thecontrary, to influence the group norm of key words. Such feedback results in user communication by means of metadata.

Flickr supports user communication capabilities, enablingfriendly relations between users. However, these relations do not

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influence considerably general situation or tag map used by entirecommunity. Flickr service enables to obtain a map of multiple keywords used by people classifying their photographs. At that only keywords that occur often enough are shown at the screen. Flickr users

can form groups by interests and fill group photograph pool.Within the framework of teacher network community

activities supported by Intel Teach for the Future Program in2005, Flickr.com server presents a gathered collection of digital

photos of Russian cities: Saint-Petersburg, Nizhny Novgorod,Saratov, Irkutsk, Novosibirsk, Ekaterinburg, Pskov, Voronezh. Thecollection is extended by both teachers and students. When adding anew photo, project members also add photo description and keywords, i.e. tags, by which the photo can be found further. By the endof November number of photos almost reaches 600. If precise GPScoordinates of the place shown at the photo are known, they are alsoadded as tags. Using such tags and GeoBloggers network serviceenables to combine stories and photographs included in collection by

project members with Google digital map service(maps.google.com), and thus, to obtain an image of the place, where

the photo has been taken, at Google map. Every digital photo isassigned not only temporary, but also a spatial value. Users that havelabeled their photos with geotagged labels ( geo:lat= coordinate,geo:long= coordinate) are provided by the service with geobloggersmap, at which these photographs are located. In a simplified formused to record data as tags in Flickr system coordinates are presentedas geo:lat=56.1939 and geo:long=43.5922.

How to show your city to Community in brief To implement inter-regional projects using GPS receivers,

there is a special Wandering Intels Community (GPSI) at Flickr server. To join the community activities, it is necessary:

To register at Flickr.com To download digital photographs of your city (not bigger than

1200 x 900)

To tag photos using key words: Russia, 2005, vintel, GPS,city

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To add photo description. To add clarifying notes to separate parts of photographs. To add photo coordinates obtained using GPS navigator To join GPSI Community To add your photos in community pool. To add your comments to pool photographs taken in other

Russian citiesUnfortunately, Flickr service supports user communication

only in English. To help educational community members getregistered and use service capabilities, special WikiWiki pagecontains detailed Flickr information ( htp://wiki.saratov.fio.ru/wiki/)

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WikiWiki Future of knowledge management is neither searching for information, nor digital object storage management: all this is a science of dead information. The future is in how we tell stories toeach other, in the way we build new knowledge

from these stories, and reconstruct ourselvesthrough these actions. This is active, powerful, and alive future of the Wiki Way (WikiWay)

Sunir Shah, September 30, 2005 Wikipedia eats Google

http://www.socialtext.com/weblog/050930wpvsgoogle.html

WikiWiki (wiki) is a collection of interconnected records.Initially, technology developer Ward Cunningham called theapplication the fast hypertext interaction environment. ThenWikiWiki term (means very fast in Hawaiian) became to be used.When using WikiWiki a person may not pay attention to usingHyperText markup language instructions. A text of any collection

page is interpreted by the program as a hypertext.In WikiWiki a radical model of collective hypertext is

implemented, when every network community member is providedan opportunity to create and edit any record. There are obviousadvantages of using WikiWiki technologies to organize jointactivities. A user deals only with a usual hypertext on a pagecontaining Edit Page button. To edit the page, a usual browser is

enough, with little knowledge of HyperText markup languageneeded.An important WikiWiki feature is that any of community

members can participate in editing any record. This feature makesWikiWiki the most powerful tool of collective hypertext creation, anup-to-date electronic blackboard, at which the whole group can write.An advantage of such electronic blackboard as compared to usualschool one is that all utterances written at electronic blackboard are

saved. If any record is replaced by a new one, it is stuck at the blackboard over an old record. At that, all previous records are saved.

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On the one hand, it allows to track every record history in WikiWikidatabase. On the other hand, it guarantees data safety and certainsecurity of joint activity field from erroneous or purposefullydestructive actions. WikiWiki pages are interconnected using the

simplest addressing system. Such simplicity requires definite rules.To support such a capability, unambiguous template patterns areneeded; a program agent can be taught to use such patterns. VariousWikiWiki clones can be arranged in different ways and can usedifferent rules, but the key question is always searching for templates. For example, classical WikiWiki uses the followingexpression as a template:

"[A-Z][a-z0-9]+([A-Z][a-z0-9]+)+" When translating from regular-expression language it means:

mandatory Latin letter in the uppercase followed by a mandatoryletter in the lowercase or a numeral and any number of such lettersand numerals.

Italicized combination of characters in brackets in the abovesentence can be repeated by any number of times. In human languagethe rule is not very euphonic, but quite clear to the program. For

example, in first WikiWikis such words as WikiWiki, FireFox or SourceForge were correct WikiWords, while MSOffice was a wrongone. Users can create new WikiWords. At that, no error messageswill be returned. The program will just offer you to explain newWikiWord meaning. To refer to an existing or new concept, youshould just use in the text a WikiWord recorded according to thegiven rule.

As a rule, up-to-date WikiWiki programs understand Russianand can be used to talk in Russian WikiWords. Within Swikiframework, to define a template it is necessary to use asterisk symbol; everything restricted by asterisk symbol from two sides isconsidered to be *WikiWords*. Nowadays the most popular Wikiengine version, on which Wikipedia open encyclopedia is based, usessquare brackets as template delimiters. Everything taken in doublesquare brackets is considered by the program agent as

[[WikiWords]]. Using special signs to create and highlight hypertextlinks makes link creation even easier and makes it optional to use

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WikiWords. Using such rules of the game, any character strings takenin asterisks or square brackets can be WikiWords. WikiWiki wascreated as a collective information assistant to help easilyinterconnect database fragments or pages. In addition to personal

advantages of fast document creation there are also additionalcollaboration advantages for document editing with other network users. At that, a capability of individual activities, that of creating ahypertext letter just for your own self remains available.

Special WikiWiki in brief To organize inter-regional projects using GPS receivers,

special WikiWiki has been created. To join the community activities,it is necessary:

To register. It helps track your pages. To attend best practice pages and become familiar with

WikiWiki style To add your name and a link to your city To discuss [[Virtual Excursion]] article To extend [[Wiki Page]] text about your city with new

concepts, places, photographs

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City streets learning projects in IntelTeach for the Future Program

In September December of 2005, geotagging city gamesusing GPS receivers were held in several Russian cities. Discussionof the games was conducted in Live Journal within the framework of network community. Virtual tours are prepared and presented usingFlickr and WikiWiki services. Every teams activities resulted invirtual city tour. Schoolchildren write an informal story of the placethey live in. The story is illustrated by digital photos downloaded toFlickr server. Players learn both how to use GPS receivers and work with network technologies: download photographs, use key words,make friends with other teams, create WikiWiki pages, locatedigital photos on these pages, bind pages.

Activities related to virtual tour do not come to an end after sgroup presents its work. Game organizers and guests from other cities single out hypertext presentation keywords that evoke their special interest. After that teams must create articles revealing

names of specified objects.As a result of community activities, digital map of Russiancities is gradually formed, where Intel Teach for the FutureProgram has conducted and still conducts its city games using GPSreceivers. Besides, due to efforts of geotagging game participants, acollective learning city encyclopedia is gradually formed. In thecourse of joint activities, community members gather geographicalcoordinates of locations, take digital photographs in these locations,

learn additional information of the places, and sometimes transformit in question answer form.

Besides gathering information, a learning project mustinclude a story that would accumulate all the diversity of gatheredmaterials presenting them in a narration form. This form is necessaryas people usually dont like reading paper or electronic dictionariesand encyclopedias. People like listening and reading to stories.Selecting a story that would consolidate community member activities in various Russian cities we based our choice on successfulexperience of creating Carmen SanDiego TV-show and a number of

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learning games. To create a game that would attract schoolchildren,Carmen SanDiego authors suggested using a story of a privatedetective. A detective was a woman in a coat and read felt hat, withan exotic easy-to-remember name that was chasing criminals all over

the world in the meantime solving geography-related tasks.For our story we used a character of traveling frog that travels

from one city to another (see Appendix 2). In each city the frogexecutes a special secret mission that game participants shoulddiscover by visiting and examining points the frog had visited. Toincrease believability of the story about traveling frogs, a specialLive Journal blog has been created; the blog stories are published bya group of authors on behalf of a frog:www.livejournal.com/users/frog_agentcy/

As any Live Journal, the frogs diary contains information of its author: its brief biography and list of interests.Traveling frog biography:

It is plausible, but not interesting. You can contradict me that realityis not obliged to be interesting. And I will tell you that reality maynot, but it does not concern hypotheses.

Borkhes. Death and Boussole I am a traveling frog. I travel over cities and execute secret missionsthere. I gather fairy-tales, steal brilliants, restore monasteries,rename streets, extend reality, deschool society, create communities,teach students, deep parallel, multiple entities, count stars.Frogs list of interests:augmentation, carmen sandiego, computer games, cooking, deep

parallel, deshooling, ecology, education, flickr, flocks, frogs, geography, geotagging, gps, hypertext, Illich, Intel, Italy, monarchy,money, out-door education, religion, revolution, Russia, schooling,

secret mission, traveling, turtle, ubiquity, wikiwiki, Bach, Borkhes,Gorky, Lenin, Pavich, Sverdlov, Death and Boussole, Trio from

Belville, Khazar dictionary, absinth, Charlie angels, brilliants,railway stations, borders, crane, green tea, greens, snakes, games,coffee, cooking, frogs, mission, mobile systems, teaching, memorials,

cakes, traveling, revolution, connection, fairy-tales, France, church,turtles, chess.

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Besides biography and interests the blog contains frog history written by a casual observer.Frogs historyThere was a frog. Better to say, there were several frogs. And they

were fine. A warm bog, slime, yellow lily pads. But one summer dayeverything has changed. There came a man in big gumboots and witha net. He has caught frogs took them out of their natural habitat.Moreover. With the help of spells and technical means he turned them into beautiful girls. Maybe in Vasilisas the Beautiful, or inCharlie Angels. He hung yellow GPS stations on their chests, and made them run on errands for him. Travel to various cities and execute different secret missions. To clean the pond, or to take

pictures of walls and fences, or to gather fairy-tales and recipes. Frogs feel cold and bad, but still travel to cities to execute their missions. This slavery will last till spring. And the worst of all is that they cant complain to anybody and tell of their hard life. The onlything they can do it to leave records in this frogs blog. Only on Live

Journal pages can they write of the missions that have already beencompleted.

Creating a virtual character that integrates events and objectsin various cities allows to transfer activities of students using GPSnavigators to a new level. Now instead of solving tasks in separate

points that are not connected to each other they have to find anddecipher a message contained in the city geographical context.

Experience of using new socialware allows to outlineexpected development trends for network projects in the nearestfuture:

Number of categories of digital objects that are exchanged bynetwork activity participants is gradually increasing.

Organizer of joint network project ever oftener plays the roleof school adviser that observes children group behavior, andnot a marshaller that controls everybodys actions.

Learning projects are ever oftener leave school environmentsand appeal to open knowledge exchange communities.

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Adoption of new tools does not only give us an opportunity tosolve new tasks. New tools gradually modify our world outlook,allow us to see the world from a new point of view. This new modelof network interaction can be used in teaching practice for teachers,

students, and schoolchildren to assimilate important ideas of decentralization and environmental strategies of joint activities.

In new environment an organizer of joint network projectsever oftener plays the role of school adviser that observes childrengroup behavior, and not an officer who controls everybodys actions.We have introduced network adviser term to emphasize gregariouscharacter of modern network communities. Such adviser, first of all,extends students field of vision, helps them trace each othersactivity lines. The further students can see, the more they know of actions of other group members, the clearer they understanddirections, in which other participants move, and the sooner overalldirection is formed. School adviser must see all group members. Hemust tell the group of what he sees. To do this, a teacher as an adviser can use direct communication forms, indirect communication formsinside social services, and special services that allow to see

connection between pages, key words and photos.If an adviser prefers using direct communication forms, hecan address community members directly telling them (in direct maillist) what he observes at a given stage of community development.

If an adviser prefers using indirect communication formsinside social services, he will have to perform following actionsdepending on a community type:

To read all Live Journal records, find new topics incomments, consolidate and interconnect various topics,annotate activities of separate students in his communityactivity reviews.

To look through and edit all exiting WikiWiki pages. To findcommon topics at pages and at a link level to show studentswho is near them, where their partners move, and whatinteraction with them is possible.

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In Flickr service to look though all published photos, their descriptions and key words. To bind photographs and recordsusing links, add key words and comments.

We suppose, experience of participation in new network forms that teachers gain inside the network community will extendtheir ideas of capabilities of project network activities and will beused in future when organizing network projects for teachers,students and schoolchildren.

A new educational project It is Time to Come Back to

Home, supported by Intel and TransTeleCom started February, 2nd

2006 will help teachers and students to create their own wikipedia pages. These entries will describe the events, people and places of education interest. Visit www.letopisi.ru web-site and share your stories to the broad wiki-community.

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http://www.letopisi.ru/http://www.letopisi.ru/http://www.letopisi.ru/


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Network Resources Links:

Learning materials :http://pat.iatp.ru learning materials for creation and development of network communities

GPSRussian site of geocaching http://www.geocaching.ru Maps + photographs - http://www.geobloggers.comGoogle maps http://maps.google.com

Live JournalVintel Community - http://www.livejournal.com/community/vintel/

Flickr.comhttp://www.flickr.comhttp://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/vintel/ - vintel tagGPSI Community- http://www.flickr.com/groups/gpsi/

WikiWikiWikipedia - http://www.wikipedia.org Wikipedia in Russian - http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki Learning WikiWiki http://pat.iatp.ru/wiki.plVintel Project WikiWiki http://wiki.saratov.fio.ru/wiki

Intel Teach for the Future Program - www.iteach.ru

Institute for Development of Educational Technologies www.irot.ru
http://pat.iatp.ru/http://www.geocashing.ru/http://www.geobloggers.com/http://maps.google.com/http://www.livejournal.com/community/vintel/http://www.flickr.com/http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/vintel/http://www.flickr.com/groups/gpsi/http://www.wikipedia.org/http://ru.wikipedia.org/wikihttp://pat.iatp.ru/wiki.plhttp://wiki.saratov.fio.ru/wikihttp://www.iteach.ru/http://www.irot.ru/http://pat.iatp.ru/http://www.geocashing.ru/http://www.geobloggers.com/http://maps.google.com/http://www.livejournal.com/community/vintel/http://www.flickr.com/http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/vintel/http://www.flickr.com/groups/gpsi/http://www.wikipedia.org/http://ru.wikipedia.org/wikihttp://pat.iatp.ru/wiki.plhttp://wiki.saratov.fio.ru/wikihttp://www.iteach.ru/http://www.irot.ru/

Documents

Educational Geo-Caching