This project is a re-imagining of the traditional guided tour which empowers young people to engage creatively with the built environment. It involves users as co-designers, producing a tour by making use of mobile technologies to both initiate and respond to a scattering of located nodes in and around Deptford Creek. Key Stage 3 students walk usually inaccessible and fenced-off areas of Deptford, making imaginative connections between large and small-scale relics that connect histories and stories embedded in the creek itself. Skip straight down to article…

Project article

Partners

Goldsmiths College, University of London
Futurelab

Technology

Mobile Bristol toolkit
PDAs
GPS
Headphones

Outline

Mudlarking in Deptford was originally an idea submitted by Goldsmiths College, exploring how associative histories, stories and visions of Deptford Creek can be woven into a guided tour of the area - one in which the participant actually produces the tour. The site itself provides a rich, immersive stimulus for pervasive technologies to seamlessly engage young learners in creatively responding to a real and live local environment. In giving students opportunities to exploit the well-known form of the guided tour they can actively explore relations between process and outcome in a project where process is the outcome.

The mixture of location-specific content and activities, and the 'My Story' function developed during the project (which allows participants to author their own tour), ensured that this participatory tour is both an involving and evolving experience.

The thread running through this learning event is the interpretation of relics (aural and visual, large and small-scale) to unlock memories and visions concerning everyday life in and around the creek, thus building an 'architexture' of:

• souvenirs and remembrances from users of the creek
• traces and remnants of past and present creekside industries
• visions of real and fantasy future development
• the creek's natural habitats and environmental protection
• found objects from the creek mud bed.

It is in this context that young learners will hijack the formulaic guided tour.

Learning research objectives

Futurelab's key aims in supporting the development of a prototype of Mudlarking in Deptford were to investigate:

1. How subverting the didactic guided tour of urban sites impacted on developing creative responses to the built environment.
2. How mobile technologies enabled young learners to reconceptualise an everyday urban site.
3. How sharing experiences through location-sensitive technologies could create shared understanding between users.

Findings

Responses to, and enthusiasm for the Mudlarking in Deptford project were extremely positive. The tour structure and digital provocations encouraged students to regularly interact with peers and teachers, and to complete a variety of activities around the whole tour site. The social nature of the tour appeared to be integral to its success in that the participatory nature of the tour encouraged:

• interaction with and investigation of the built environment
• conversations about the location and local area
• PDA capture of understandings and observations of the locality
• interactions with present and dispersed others about shared location.

There was further interaction and collaboration at the 'nodes' along the route, as students shared 'hidden stories' from the environment, both during and after the tour.

Particular reference can be made to the digital provocations that prompted real-world, physical responses such as shouting within an echoing 'mushroom' park shelter and physically following a virtual stream visible on their PDA. The students' enjoyment of and their lengthy involvement in these activities suggest that mobile learning activities that take advantage of 'mobility' as a core feature raise interest and engagement.

The students enjoyed taking part in activities they had worked on themselves and also on activities designed by other students. The evolving nature of the participatory tour added to this by providing a space where students could capture and share their understandings and observations. A further benefit of this was the ability to publish this work to a wider, real-world audience. This is an area for further investigation in the development of mobile learning activities.

Next steps

The Mudlarking in Deptford project prompts many questions into the design, research and development of mobile learning contexts. Specific questions raised include:

• What is the role of the teacher/expert in mobile learning contexts?
• How best can activities be developed that take advantage of both 'mobility' and the benefits of individual locations?
• What are the benefits of asynchronous-located interactions that foster a shared sense of place between participants visiting a site at different times, yet able to communicate with one another?
• How best can mobile learning experiences link to classroom activities, thinking both about the 'porous classroom' (where students begin together before moving away for mobile investigations) and the 'gathered classroom' that brings students together during and after mobile learning experiences?

This idea was submitted to Futurelab's Call for Ideas programme by Juliet Sprake, Goldsmiths College.

Contacts

Futurelab: Dan Sutch
Goldsmiths College, University of London: Juliet Sprake


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September 2006