Abstract:

Teaching geography, history, story-telling, active citizenship and the use of digital tools or all of these together may seem an insurmountable task for some teachers, especially in rural and remote areas. But we found throughout the development of our project - MineTOUR - Becoming Active Citizens Through Minecraft-enhanced Virtual Tourism that there are ways of involving young people and adults alike in games and in activities that challenge their experiences with learning, with getting involved in community development activities and last, but not least, with sharing their knowledge with the outside world and becoming promoters and educators themselves.

MineTOUR, an Erasmus+ financed project aiming at empowering young individuals from rural areas to become active citizens and engage with civic societies, while promoting local tourism of their hometowns and safeguarding their cultural heritage through the use of digital means, is promoting several types of digital tools for education and community engagement: an e-learning platform, complemented by a Minecraft World created especially for MineTOUR's specific goals and last, but not least, an interactive map which acts as a Do-It-Yourself tool for users who wish to promote their region, town or village to the world.

The educational scope of the MineTOUR interactive map comes from its unique design, which encourages the user to research and collect geographical information about the place they want to talk about, to help pin that place on the map, then tell a story about why people should want to visit that place, whether it is a legend, myth, a historical or natural piece of heritage. By taking these steps, the user of the interactive map actively engages in promoting their region, town or village, thus becoming more involved in their community, which they see worthy of visiting. And last, but not least, by using the map, which will be accessible from all types of devices, the users improve their knowledge and skills in technology as well.

We aim at challenging the idea that teaching geography, history, story-telling, active citizenship and the use of digital tools is difficult by using the story of the development and testing of the interactive map in Cyprus, Greece, Spain and Romania, as a good practice both for teachers from the traditional schooling systems and for youth workers using more non-formal and informal approaches to teaching.

Keywords:

Technology, education, innovative digital tools for social sciences education.