Collaborative and Constructive Learning of Elementary School Children in Experiental Learning Spaces along the Virtuality Continuum

Abstract

Learning is an active, constructive and collaborative process, where people construct knowledge from their experiences in the world. Especially children need to learn through their senses and through physical activity. However, there are few experiental learning environments for school children available, which involve the senses and physical activity. Reasons put forward for this situation are the nature of the concepts to be learned and partly the lack of manipulative learning material. This paper introduces a mixed reality learning space collaboratively constructed by elementary school children during recent teaching experiments. During the process of constructing and interacting with the learning space along a virtuality continuum the children make learning experiences, which can be interpreted in a semiotic way and which allows the children intuitively understand concepts from the two disciplines of computer science and of the arts.