Mudlarking in Deptford - Futurelab

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“The PDA guides you aroundand then there are all theactivities to do”AimsThe overall purpose of the project was torethink the traditional guided tour and todevelop a modern alternative that would bemore involving and which would evolve overtime ie a rich, interactive tour for bothstudents and adults. The key questionsFuturelab sought to answer through theproject were:• how does the fact that users can changethe tour and the tour is not a one-way flowof information help to develop creativeresponses to the built environment?• how can mobile technologies enable younglearners to interact with an everyday urbansite differently?• how can sharing experiences throughlocation-sensitive technologies create acommon understanding between users?A second core aim of the project was todevelop a toolkit that enables students toinvestigate and creatively respond to the builtenvironment. When developing and testing theMudlarking in Deptford application, it wasassessed against the following successcriteria:• how well Mudlarking in Deptford enhancedthe young people’s engagement withsemi-formal educational activities• how far the application enabled usersto represent their knowledge in aninnovative way• how much users were encouraged toparticipate in a guided tour, rather thanpassively receiving information.Additional aims of the project include:• encouraging local people to re-imaginean otherwise familiar environment• working with local students at thedesign stage.6
Initial trialThe trial was split into three parts. 23 studentsfrom the local area were involved, around halfof which were from the co-design team whohad originally designed the tour. A secondgroup was selected from a different school,Deptford Green School, which had not beeninvolved in the project prior to the trial. Alsoinvolved were adults who had asked toparticipate in the scheme as an optional part ofthe London Open House event.Students then set off on a suggested route forthe tour. During the tour, all students wereaccompanied by a teacher and an observer,who ensured the students’ safety and watchedtheir behaviour during the tour.Finally the whole group met back at theCreekside Centre for a post-tour debriefingwith interviews and questionnaires.Students completing the trial tour were splitinto four groups, each starting the tour at adifferent destination node on the route. Thegroups were then split into pairs and eachpair of students was given a PDA, a GPStransmitter and a pair of headphones to listento audio content on the handheld computer.“It’s sort of an adventure:like running around andfinding stuff”Before embarking on the tour, students weregiven a briefing including instruction on how touse the devices, how to manually reboot theGPS in the event of a failure, and how to restartthe PDA if it crashed. Students also filled in aquestionnaire about their expectations of the tour.7
Page 1 and 2: Mudlarking in DeptfordA new kind of
Page 3 and 4: OverviewThere’s the standard scho
Page 5 and 6: The ingredientsHow we got thereThe
Page 7: Dynamic activities were suggested a
Page 11 and 12: TechnologyThe underlying technology
Page 13 and 14: ResourcesThe Futurelab website has
Page 16: ILLUSTRATION ON LEFT OF FRONT COVER

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