Young Children Collaborating to use Maps during Technology based Distributed Learning Activities

I. Ioannidou and A. Dimitrakopoulou. Young children collaborating to use maps during technology based distributed learning activities. In proceedings of 6th International Conference of Mathematics Teaching, Volos, Greece, October 2004.
—————————————————

This paper concentrate on the theme of children’s learning of map design and construction. One of the point raised in the text is that there are lots of studies on the cognitive difficulties children have in understanding maps, while few studies concentrate on the design of learning activities aiming to develop learning on the same themes. The authors’ solution is a system in which a team of children can stand in front of a 2D digital representation of the world while another team can walk in the actual world. These two teams are connected with a walky-talky device for communication. In this way the authors have been tested several “scripts” which report significant learnings in the cognitive difficulties enumerated in previous studies. Using the same platform the authors have a chance to test several collaboration settings which enables for a zoom into intra-group or inter-group collaboration.