eMapps.com is a project funded under the European Commissions IST 6th Framework Programme (FP6).  It focuses on demonstrating how games and mobile technologies can be combined to provide new and enriching experiences for children in the school curriculum and beyond. Its work will concentrate initially on Europe’s New Member States and school children in the age group 9-12. It began work in October 2005 and will run for 30 months.

Schools within eMapps.com will create their own local cultural content through games in close interaction with libraries, museums or archives in their city and share this with peer groups in other countries. Therefore it is important to know, among several other aspects, how schools already link to community organisations in their countries and to draw on the potential benefits and experience from such cooperation for teachers and students.

Section 1 (MDR Partners) of the report synthesises the results of recent general research on the impact of ICT in relation to games and mobile technologies, on education policy, schools, teachers, learners and the informal learning sector.

It states if ICT aims to achieve its potential, a robust yet flexible infrastructure is needed in schools to support educational use of ICT, e.g. a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) or Managed Learning Environment (MLE). However, students mostly use ICT in schools to send email and access the Internet than to use educational software or learning platforms.

It is further argued that a dual relationship exists between ICT and the curriculum, where ICT may be used to assist in conveying the curriculum but at the same time may change the content of the curriculum.

Attention to informal learning is also inclined to make more evident the experiential nature of learning, involving notions of wonder, surprise, feelings, peer and personal responses, fun and pleasure. An interest in out-of-school informal learning is, therefore, much more of a mainstream political concern now, although to date it has not on the whole been assigned sufficient resources.

Next to many calls for collaboration between schools and the informal sector there is significant debate over the value and utility of digital resources. Libraries, archives and especially museums uniquely provide access to ‘objects’ in the digital and physical formats. By various means they seek to build learner participation, interactivity and collaboration between institution and learner. A new set of relationships is emerging, between objects, learners and digital technology, in which cultural institutions are places of exploration, discovery and interpretation. This discussion is analogous to that about the use of digital Leaning Objects to enhance teaching and learning in schools, exploring how emerging standards allow smaller, 'chunks' of content to be cost-effectively used, adapted, shared, reused and developed by both teachers and pupils.

Games have always been used in education. But for ICT-based games to take on a meaningful role in formal or informal education, the education sector and the wider public and media need to better understand the potential and diversity of such tools. Though a rapidly growing and maturing body of research is helping to develop a clearer understanding of the educational potential of ICT-based games, there are as yet a small number of games that have a clear contribution to make to the educational agenda.

Mobile phones are already being used in education, but so far the uses have been fairly modest e.g.  'text alerts' to parents and students. This kind of usage represents only a fraction of what mobile technology can potentially achieve in education. One of the most important qualities a mobile phone can offer is its context-awareness enabling more personal, spontaneous informal learning experiences situated somewhere more relevant than in a classroom, using camera phones to upload content immediately to a PC or server and staying in touch with tutors and other students whilst ‘in the field’.

In Section 2 of the report European Schoolnet (EUN) conducted a survey of national or regional policies in relation to the use of ICT in the curriculum, covering developments in national school curricula, in lesson planning and teaching methodologies. The aim of the survey was to give a sound overview on the actual situation of and conditions for ICT integration, including games and mobile technologies, in schools in the New Member States (NMS).  The survey included Estonia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia.

A variety of policy approaches can be found in the New Member States for the strategic development of ICT. These range from more coordinated central actions reflected in a long term national strategy for ICT, dispersed programmes initiated by different ministries to various forms of project cooperation and agreements between different institutions. Therefore the degree of importance that is given to a sustainable development of ICT integration in schools varies considerably, with, in the worst case, no continuation of funding for further development of the ICT integration.

For all countries current policy priorities include:

• Information literacy;
• Software and information resources;
• Infrastructure.

The conditions for infrastructure and broadband access vary (within and between NMS). In Estonia, Hungary, Slovenia, Lithuania there are more favourable conditions in terms of providing broadband access to schools with all schools connected to broadband in Estonia and Hungary. Students per internet computer ratios are still quite high for the majority of countries. They are better with 11.7 students per computer in Slovenia, but there are still 44 students per internet connected computer in primary schools in the Slovak Republic and 31 in Poland. Hungary, Estonia and Lithuania are in the mid-range with around 20 students per computer.

Curriculum autonomy exists in all countries but at various levels. In all countries, schools act under open and goal-oriented curricula and therefore are quite autonomous in shaping their own curricula. However, this autonomy varies between countries and schools act under different binding national frameworks, standards and procedures. Comparison of the level of curriculum autonomy indicates that there is most freedom in Slovenia, Czech Republic and Hungary but more rigid curriculum frameworks in Lithuania and Estonia.

Community links will be crucial for the success of eMapps.com as active collaboration of schools with museums, public libraries, archives or community centres will form the core partnerships for schools in the creation of content. This kind of such collaboration is still in its infancy, not part of the curriculum and little evaluated yet, but there are some promising initiatives in some countries with which eMapps.com can link. Concerning digitised cultural and historical content, Slovenia, Estonia and Hungary are forerunners and related projects could be followed up to see how far these projects have actually been integrated into the daily life in schools. Library projects are developed in Slovenia, Estonia, Poland, Latvia and Hungary. Community service organisations providing ICT tools, access and training in Hungary and Poland are potentially relevant for eMapps.com.

When it comes to the use of games in schools, there are no concrete barriers in the curriculum in any of the countries. The integration of games as a (pedagogical) tool rather depends on the individual will of teachers and their competencies to do so. Time and the availability of suitable games for teachers can be constraints.

Mobile phones, though actively used by learners, are not yet widely used for educational purposes. Consequently, most current school regulations rather focus on restricting their use during school time and lessons. A more proactive learning oriented approach towards mobile phones in education is taken by Hungary and Lithuania. In both countries, the use of advanced technologies is fostered bringing new opportunities for learning. Hungary has included mobile communication as a topic in the curriculum which should be looked at in detail by eMapps.com.

A final section on the impact of ICT on teaching and learning summarises the evidence of national research in this area as well as in which international research projects countries are involved.

The survey also contains overview tables on:

• Games currently used in schools in the NMS;
• Computer distribution (placement, student/ computer ratio);
• Broadband connections;
• Digital learning resource repositories per country.

Section 3 presents an analysis of a survey questionnaire designed by Cyberespacio.
Data was collected from schools selected to participate in eMapps.com between October and December 2005 in the eight participating New Member States. The data is relevant only to this sample of schools. It would thus be unreliable to seek to extend the findings or to draw conclusions more widely, e.g. nationally.

The survey addressed six question areas to a sample of children in the age group 8-12:

1. Do you own any of these game platforms?
2. Do you play games on any of the platforms listed in Q1?
3. What kind of game do you play? Please write down the game's name.
4. How often and how long do you play games?
5. Do you have Internet connection at home? Please choose what applies to you 
6. Do you play games at school as part of the learning process?

In section 4 MMU (Manchester Metropolitan University) specifies the functional requirements for the eMapps.com platform. The major technical output of the eMapps.com project will be the creation of a platform for use in the project’s New Member State partner schools and in conjunction with external partner agencies such as libraries.

The platform will combine the use of online games, mobile technology, digital cartography and digital photography to implement a highly innovative system for playing games, primarily suitable for children in the age group 9-12.

The functional requirements for the system are specified for the following areas:

• Control platform;
• Digital cartography;
• Digital photography;
• Online communications;
• Game design and implementation;
• Children’s living map of Europe;
• Testing;
• Documentation and support.

Download the full report (pdf)