1 / 28

EDUTAINMENT IN CARTOGRAPHY

Explore the journey of edutainment in cartography from traditional puzzle maps to modern interactive web games. Discover how early computer games like Carmen Sandiego paved the way for educational entertainment, and how CD-ROMs evolved into multimedia learning tools. Understand the impact of the internet on edutainment products and the development of the web over the years.

rchaney
Download Presentation

EDUTAINMENT IN CARTOGRAPHY

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. EDUTAINMENT IN CARTOGRAPHY

  2. Edutainment Education + entertainment It is difficult to define its characteristics, but nowadays if the creators want to be successful the entertainment part is to be more evident then the education part. We have to take into account that without proper guidance, most users (kids, pupils, students) will deal with only the most entertaining elements of the program and neglect the rest.

  3. The good edutainment Basic elements • educational content, • interactive components (real time response), • attractive interface that can catch the attention of the users. The essence of the games is the interactivity which practically implemented as the rules of the game.

  4. Early edutainment The main types of traditional cartographic edutainment are the following: • Puzzle: the elements can be equal in size, but can be geographic units of the map (administrative areas like countries or counties). • Outline (unlettered) map game: the players have to identify map features, or have to position them on a map. • Cross-words: this is the combination of the normal cross-word and the outline (unlettered) map.

  5. Early edutainment

  6. Early computer games: Commodore

  7. Early computer games: Amiga North and South Storm across Europe

  8. Early computer games: Atari Agent USA Earth viewes Earth Views is the first program you can buy for any personal computer that depicts a 3-D image of the earth in rotation on any axis. It's also a geography lesson, trivia quiz, atlas and adventure game.

  9. Carmen Sandiego 1986 - Where in the USA is Carmen Sandiego? 1988 - Where in Europe is Carmen Sandiego? 1989 - Where in Time is Carmen Sandiego? 1991 - Where in America’s Past is Carmen Sandiego? 1993 - Where in Space is Carmen Sandiego?

  10. Computer games (puzzles) Learn Europe Asia Map Puzzle

  11. Computer games (edutainment-like) The game covers the European history from 1419-1820. War, trade, economy, corruption, rebellions, diplomacy, religion, culture, colonies, exploration etc. Students should approach history as a dynamic process – see how facts and events came to be. In the short run the game is historically accurate, but the inaccuracy increasing in long run. Europa Universalis

  12. Computer games (edutainment-like) Civil war SimCity 4

  13. Computer games (orienteering) Navigate WinOL

  14. CD-ROM as an important step From 1985 the CD-ROM has been used as a computer storage device, but the price was very high, which didn’t allow fast distribution. The first CD-ROM products for PC-s were different dictionaries, handbooks, encyclopedias (e.g. Microsoft Bookshelf, 1987).

  15. CD-ROM – multimedia Multimedia was the most promising new function in the first part of 90’s. Sound, video could be part of the product, but at that time very few users have invested on real multimedia PC-s. • National Geographic Picture Atlas of the World (1992) • World Atlas (vector maps) Hungary, based on a German product (1994) • Microsoft Encarta (1995) • Klaus-Perthes: Mit Alex CD-ROMS (1997-)

  16. CD-ROM – edutainment Mit Alex auf Reisen Manó Magyarország (Troll series: Hungary)

  17. Encarta

  18. CD-ROM nowadays CD-ROM is the common media for software distribution. DVD-ROM has much higher capacity, but due to the different standards this media is still less popular (except movies). For edutainment products the internet became more important.

  19. The web In the 80’s the Internet was a common place of researchers, scientists, peoples in higher educations. From the beginning of the 90’s the web became even more important factor of the computer industry. Since 1995 the web has influenced the development of the industry: everybody wanted to be present on the web, all the software must be connected somehow to web based features.

  20. The early web development The most important factor of the 90’s was the limited bandwith of internet connection. The majority of internet users were able to use only modem connection which doesn’t let using rich multimedia elements. The developments of hardware industry were able to improve the connection speed of the internet users (including the wireless connection). When Tim Berners-Lee invented the first browser and the whole web strategy in the beginning of 90’s the internet was a very static media. Only few standard file formats were supported (html, gif, jpg).

  21. Web development The new techniques of the late 90’s, like Flash, Java, JavaScript, VRML, SVG let the developers using multimedia elements to change the static web pages into dynamic websites. The standardization effect of the web is also very important: only the most popular, industry standards file formats are accepted (plug-ins can give chance for less known formats), but these formats can transfer more rich content then ever before.

  22. Web edutainment - samples http://www.landkarten-spiele.de/ http://www.dannyg.com/javascript/puzzle/IEmapgame.htm

  23. Web edutainment - samples http://www.topocopter.com http://www.agameaday.com/rainfolder/raingame3.htm

  24. Web games nowadays The new trends can give more chance for edutainment in the web environment. Not every user is keen on playing complicated, 3D games which use virtual reality, but these users prefer simple, easy-to-use, non-violent, relatively short, intellectual type of entertainment. Several websites offer these kinds of games. The majority of internet games are using new methods: the most amazing and recent element of internet games is the animation.

  25. Honfoglaló (Settler) - A popular web game http://www.honfoglalo.com

  26. Honfoglaló (Settler) - A popular web game A strategic game-like edutainment about the 1848 Hungarian revolution, 2004 (sponsored by the Ministry of Education) – the engine is based on Honfoglaló

  27. The future of the edutainment The appearance of the web has altered the map publishing because on the web the map user is generally unknown to the map producer, publisher and their map reading skills are also unknown. The cartography have more “users” then anytime before, so the cartographic edutainment now has better chance then ever before if we take into consideration the special opportunities of the web environment.

  28. Thank you for your attention László ZENTAI Associate Professor laszlo.zentai@elte.hu Eszter DOMBÓVÁRI PhD student deszter9@hotmail.com Department of Cartography and Geoinformatics Eötvös Loránd University Pázmány Péter sétány 1/A, Budapest, Hungary

More Related