Teaching Cartography to Children Through Interactive Media - Maps for the Future Children Education and Internet - page 201

allows competition among pupils and encourages their rapidity and smartness. That
is why the project team thought about introducing a chronometer.
The pupil will always be invited to develop his knowledge and to participate to
the several activities proposed by the media during his virtual tour through the
classroom. In this school environment, designed for learning geography, we use an
attractive visual and graphic language, in order to provide a more friendly and
interesting training, and to offer challenges to advance in the reading of maps and in
practical cartography.
Other important fixed points in the media are the classroom windows. It is
through these windows that the landscape can be observed. The landscape can be
the community, the other side of the school building, the urban landscape or even a
beach. Regarding this theme, we try to stimulate the sketching of the landscape
presented by pictures of Niter´ i, cut in nine equal rectangles, making it possible to
build a puzzle as a linked activity.
Another fix point is the waste bin in the corner of the room, nearby the teacher
desk. Pupils are invited to read short texts about garbage, their decomposing time
and the care to be brought to environment. Afterwards they are invited to a selective
collection of garbage, with bins of different colors (green, yellow, blue and red)
according to the type of garbage to throw.
In the classroom we also have a small museum with relics of a thematic long
walk along seaside, and an aquarium with a fish. The question put to the pupil: is the
fish is its natural environment? At this moment an activity is introduced with
information about the fauna (fishes, crustaceans, molluscs and marine mammals)
of the Guanabara Bay. The proposed game afterward is very like a “naval battle”,
using alphanumerical coordinates to localize each element of the game. At each
good shot, the player receives a picture of the animal (fish, crustacean, mollusc). In
this game the animals are only presented with pictures.
The daily classroom goes this way and the cards and posters stuck on the board
are elements of activities for these media players. The pupils will have the oppor-
tunity to make their own board posters according to the suggested themes.
16.3 Conclusions and Perspectives
Games constitute a resource still seldom used in classrooms. They are however very
valuable because they arouse expectation, anxiety and enthusiasm to the pupils. A game
is ludic by itself and presents challenges well accepted at all ages, in the classroom as well
as outside it. For students, it is something amazing, as the game sounds like a challenge to
their cleverness, bringing them to know more about the rules and to think about winning
strategies. (Passini et al. 2007 )
The didactic resource represented by this media and described in the present
document is the result of a research and of a dream. We have brought together a
heterogeneous group of students to build an educational and interactive media,