Interactions - May/June 2010

FORUM LIFELOng InTERAcTIOnS
park following the clues provided by the first cell
phone. The players have to formulate hypoth-
eses, discuss them, retrace their steps when they
go wrong, and correct their mistakes. If players
need help in discovering a place, they can ask the
“Oracle,” which is a software module that provides
further clues for the game, available on the sec-
ond cell phone. The clues support both the game
and students’ learning. Rather than simply giv-
ing the right answer, the clues lead the students
in the right direction, helping them discover the
correct answer for themselves. The loudspeak-
ers, which are connected to the first phone and
installed on the backpack, emit multiple sounds
to ensure a realistic as well as an engaging envi-
ronment (e.g., people chatting at the market, carts
rumbling on the paved road, fire crackling at the
furnace, etc.). The intensity of each sound chang-
es dynamically according to the players’ physical
position, acquired from GPS technology available
on most commercial cell phones.
Once the group has correctly identified the
locations, it receives “Gods’ gifts,” consisting of
3-D reconstructions of these places. The students
can interact with such reconstructions and visu-
ally compare the ancient appearance with the
existing remains. They are emotionally involved
in the learning process because of a sense of
“being there” in Roman times, that is generated by
this enhancement of the observed real environ-
ment with contextual sounds and 3-D reconstruc-
tions.
After the game, the teachers meet with the
students for debriefing at the museum. This
phase has been enhanced by the use of technol-
ogy, which makes the activities more engaging.
The debriefing application is installed on a lap-
top, together with a projector, allowing students
to play a “collective memory game.” They must
locate the monuments and archaeological objects
they found while playing the game in the park,
marking them on a virtual map. The system can
also show high-resolution 3-D models of other
areas that might not be accessible in the park.
Finally by analyzing the log-files of the game
recorded on the cell phones, the system can
replay the activities of any or each group, showing
the path they took across the archaeological park,
and declaring the winning group.
So far, Explore! has been field tested with 124
middle-school students, who expressed excite-

ment about the opportunity to use technology
during their visit and commented on how nice it
was to use a cell phone for the game and see the
3-D reconstructions. They also enjoyed interact-
ing with the application in the debriefing phase,
in which they could compete to show how much
they had learned during the game. The studies
confirmed the educational efficacy of the pro-
posed game and also demonstrated that students
are not distracted by the technology, which could
have been a problem.
A great advantage of Explore!, which makes it
very attractive for use in archaeological parks
across Italy with very limited funds, is that the
game infrastructure requires almost no invest-
ment by the park. The system runs on commer-
cial cell phones, and the software is all contained
in the phone’s memory card. Only a laptop and a
projector are required for the successive debrief-
ing phase, which can also be performed at school
the next day. Students can use their own cell
phones, provided they are equipped with GPS
receivers. Another advantage is that the system is
ecologically friendly—no hardware infrastructure
needs to be installed in the park itself. Finally, the
system is available at any time with no need to
book a guided visit in advance.
Explore! is designed to be used in a wider set
of historical sites. The game content (historical
information, 3-D reconstructions, sounds, etc.)
is provided by XML files and can be authored in
numerous ways and adapted to different sites. An
authoring tool has been developed that allows end
users with no computer programming expertise,
e.g., history teachers, to create games to be played
in different sites.

About
the Authors
M.F. Costabile is a
professor in the
department of
computer science
at the University of Bari, Italy. She also coordinates the Interaction,
Visualization, and Usability Lab, staffed by young researchers,
including Carmelo Ardito and Rosa Lanzilotti. Research interests of
the IVU Lab include multimedia and multimodal human-computer
interaction, information visualization and visual analytics, usability
and user experience, and end-user development. Cultural heritage
is one of the main application domains currently being investigated.