PixelMap: Enhancing Children's Geography Learning with Tangible Augmented Reality Interaction

Geography learning holds immense potential for expanding children’s perspectives and nurturing their spatial thinking abilities. However, traditional tools like maps often struggle to effectively communicate abstract knowledge to children. To address this challenge, we introduce PixelMap, a Tangible Augmented Reality (TAR) system that encourages children to construct captivating three-dimensional pixel-style maps, offering an innovative approach to guide geography learning. Leveraging the color meanings of blocks and height information of tangible elements, PixelMap facilitates concrete terrain knowledge acquisition and strengthens spatial thinking skills. Moreover, the system seamlessly introduces small-scale specialty information and abstract concepts using a multimodal approach. We conducted user testing with 24 children to evaluate PixelMap’s ability to foster their interest in geography learning and validate its impact on participants’ spatial skills. Our study also presents design insights for TAR systems, inspiring HCI researchers to explore the integration of TAR technology into geography education.

• Publication year

  2024

• Venue

  Proceedings of the Twelfth International Symposium of Chinese CHI

• Publication date

  2024-11-22

• Fields of study

  Not labeled

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1145/3758871.3758902
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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