The Explorer
My project Game at the Museum
Game at the Museum studies the effectiveness of videogames as an educational tool. I developed a videogame with the purpose of spreading knowledge about the cave paintings in la Cañaica del Calar (Murcia, Spain) and their possible meaning.
The Explorer brings la Cañaica del Calar to you in a unique experience of contemplating 360º environments and making your own paintings!
Awarded with the prizes:
1er premio XXII Exporecerca Jove: Premio Bruno Gotzens
2º premio XXXII Jóvenes Investigadores
Premio Especial Ciencias Sociales Exporecerca Jove
Premio Societat Catalana de Pedagogia Exporecerca Jove
Trabajo Distinguido en el áera de Humanidades y Arte y modalidad de comunicación oral
The Explorer abroad: Belgian Science Expo
Due to inner problems within the organisation of I Giovanni e le Szience, I was not able to present Game at the Museum there between 9th and 11th April 2022. I was invited to the Belgian Science Expo instead, which took place on 22nd and 23rd April 2022.
There, I had a stand where I showed people the project. The visitors played The Explorer and participated in the workshop, drawing the figures they saw in the stars. This time with real paint!
Workshops in museums
When this research finished, I could not test the game in a real museum environment due to time and legal limits. However, in the summer of 2021, I was able to register the game in the Spanish intellectual property and offered el Museo Arqueológico de Murcia to implement it.
Would you like to hold workshops like this in your educational environment?
Juego en el museo.docxAbstract
Videogames have not been successfully implemented in education yet, despite their teaching ability. This project aims to prove their potential. A videogame was designed and developed from scratch about cave paintings from Cañaica del Calar, Moratalla (Murcia) to apply it in a formal (School) and non-formal (Museum) environmental education. Researching about Rock Art, we found studies that set a link between them and Astronomy, checking these theories could fit in Murcia
Our sample is made up of 345 students from two public Centers (Primary and Secondary school) who participated in the videogame session. In addition to link the paintings’ tracing with the corresponding part of the celestial sphere. Unity is used to develop the videogame, Stellarium to study the constellations and SPSS Statistics for statistical analysis.
Each participant answered a series of questions before and after playing the videogame, to measure the level of learning gotten by the game. The sample tended to increase the success rate significantly in those questions mentioned explicitly in the game and to decrease it slightly in those that were not seen at first sight.
This project shows teaching through videogames is possible, and effective. About the relation between Rock Art and Astronomy, we have outlined a new point of view that opens new theses.