Abstract:

The Horizon Report, in the last three annual publications, issued in 2011, 2012, and 2013, pointed out games and augmented reality as technological trends in educational applications. Moreover, the use of these technologies in education is facing difficulties, due to the requirement of deep technical knowledge for the production of such applications. Typically, educational applications are of general purpose and rarely allow adaptation, making teachers and students to simply become consumers of ready-made applications, which often is not really useful. This article intends to show that it is possible to reverse this situation, by means of strategies that give conditions to the teacher to be an adapter of educational applications or even a creator of them, even without deep technical knowledge. In this sense, an online educational game with augmented reality and adaptability has been implemented to illustrate this possibility. Some important characteristics are discussed, such as: separation of the game structure and its content; use of multimedia, including images, sounds, narrations, videos and 3D objects, obtained from the Internet or developed by the user; online activation of the application; and application development supported by a visual authoring tool, which is simple to use. The game presented in this work uses augmented reality and focuses on the geometry area, exploring geometric solids generated by revolution of plane figures. The authoring tool used to develop the game is also presented, showing the features that make it suitable for use by teachers and students, in schools, at home, or anywhere that has an Internet connection. These features include visual interface, simplicity, adaptability of applications, and interaction with the mouse or with other ways of tangible interaction, as a marker. The game geometry was evaluated by students of undergraduate courses and distance education, who participated in its review by filling out a questionnaire, after using the application. The results of this evaluation allowed the identification of strengths and weaknesses of the game, also indicating possible improvements. Finally, the conclusions of the study are discussed, reinforcing that the adopted strategies can be useful for the development and adaptation of online educational games based on augmented reality, by teachers and students. In this way, we intend to contribute to improve of teaching and learning quality.

Keywords:

Augmented Reality, Educational Games, Online Applications, Adaptation, Authoring Tool.