Session Information
| Title | Building Locative Games with ARIS |
| Presenter(s) | Christopher Holden, Breanne Litts, David Gagnon, Seann Dikkers, and James Mathews |
| Time | Thursday, October 18, 1:30p-2:30p |
| Location | Tower |
| Format | Workshop |
| Description | ARIS is an easy-to-use, open-source development platform that allows anyone to create locative mobile activities for formal and informal learning environments. Locative virtual tours, interactive cases, situated documentaries, or data collection activities can be authored in a browser-based drag-and-drop editor, then "played" on iOS devices. We expect that anyone interested in mobile learning, locative meaningful play, or designing narrative- or data collection-based activities will find this workshop relevant.
ARIS exemplifies how an open-source model can be used to cultivate, scale and sustain educational innovation at large. In addition to using open-source licensing, the ARIS project is built around an ethos of easy entry, collaboration and distributed participation. Because the ARIS platform is designed for non-programmers, it allows a wide-range of users to quickly and easily build their own mobile-based learning activities and experiments. The resulting community of users, which currently includes over 2,600 authors and 3,300 unique designs, continues to grow and cross-pollinate, especially as more domains and research perspectives are being represented. In addition to sparking the development of new ARIS features and functionality, this diverse user group has collaborated to develop new methods of enacting and researching mobile-based learning. This hands-on workshop will focus on the use of ARIS for narrative- and data collection-based activities. During this session we will give a brief overview of the ARIS platform, then introduce participants to the basic features of ARIS by helping them build their own ARIS experiences. Our goal is that, in two hours, participants will build two activities in ARIS: a narrative-based activity and a data collection-based activity. As a result, participants will gain a foundational and practical understanding of how ARIS can be used to design and implement meaningful activities in a variety of contexts. ARIS has been used in a variety of formal and informal learning environments and content areas, including science, folklore, art, second language, physical education and history. This platform has promise wherever place can play a meaningful role in learning, whether it be to produce curricula or as a design/prototyping tool for students. Therefore, we hope that participants will not only leave our workshop with a technical understanding of ARIS, but also with an inspiration to use ARIS to push the boundaries of learning through mobile locative activities. |