Christoph Schlieder, the head of the Geogames team, talks at the 2013 Geodesign Summit. The players of a Geogame explore an outdoor environment and use GPS enabled smartphones to solve documentation tasks and access spatial information. These games are particularly interesting for educational projects on Geodesign because they not only connect the players socially but also connect them with the geographic environment.
Learning to read a changing urban design.
The lightning talk presents first results from the Geogames and playful Geodesign project. Two game scenarios are described: (1) exploration games for learning how to make use of an existing spatial design (e.g. a campus game for freshmen), (2) feedback games in which the players report what they experience as the strengths and the weaknesses of a design (e.g. an urban usability game). The talk argues that such playful approaches do enrich the learning experience in a general curriculum on spatial thinking and are especially useful where learning at a younger age (10+) is concerned.
