Research on Cartography for School Children - Maps for the Future Children Education and Internet - page 225

Interactivity of
recreation

Level 01 This allows for the comparison of items, through means of

simulation, using preexisting information, in
accordance with an individual characteristic and the
necessity of the user

Level 02 This allows for updating information, modifying the

content and recomposing the message as needed,
making co-authoring possible

Other research that was completed last year looked at the concept of interactivity
in cartographic multimedia projects and the use of Google Maps as a didactic
resource for mapping local space for children from 11 to 12 years of age (Fonseca
2010 ). Both studies look at interactivity , which is the fundamental concept for studies
regarding mapping in multimedia projects that involve time, space and culture.
We have recently begun a study looking at pre-school children's representation
of space. The objective is to put together a collection of files recording teaching
situations with children of 3 and 4 years of age. This collection enables us to
analyze how children in this age-group deal with situations that mobilize relations
between time-space-body.

18.4 Conclusions

At the start of the article we mentioned that we are carrying out our research based
on the idea of school culture . In a nutshell, knowledge and school practices are
considered to be social construction and not as knowledge originating from a
prescribed curriculum. This knowledge is loaded with cultural values coming
from the education institution itself. The power relationships exercised in the school
context modify the traditional hierarchy between student/knowledge/teacher. In the
context of school culture knowledge becomes a social construction and the method
of teaching is affected by the influences originating outside the school. Even though
learning is a personal construction, there are many concepts that are common
because they are formed by the interaction of personal experiences in the same
cultural context. The school is seen as a scenario where the students develop their
personal experiences, allowing them to re-construct and construct them together
with new knowledge. Different language types (oral, written, graphic, imagery

)
allow for this construction, and the construction of social-spatial knowledge is
achieved through cartographic language .

...

References

Aguiar LMB (2006) A cumplicidade entre a oralidade e a visualidade: lendo o mundo atrav´s dos
mapas. Dissertation, Instituto de Geociˆncias e Ciˆncias Exatas da Universidade Estadual
Paulista, S˜o Paulo