Hope Myers | Alex’s New Castle: Interactive Educational AR Children’s Story

 
Alex’s New Castle is an interactive educational augmented reality children’s story that fosters creativity through activity based learning. The AR app paired with a physical story kit creates a captivating adventure for elementary school aged children and their parents that combines creativity and fun to give them the best learning experience possible.A key feature of the story is the ability for the child to have autonomy. After entering the first room for the introduction it is completely up to the child where they want to go and what they want to do, or not. The rooms are laid out in the shape of a castle so that there is no specific order children are supposed to go in like when reading a normal book. Audio narration and subtitles help guide them to certain features that can help them progress further in the story, but there is no right and wrong way of doing things, they can go back to each room as many times as they want, and they can play as long as they like.Creative thinking is an essential skill for the children of today, however it is severely lacking in most current digital education. The activities in Alex’s New Castle are designed to teach academic concepts in a creative way, allowing for personal expression and catering to different ability levels. The children’s actions have an effect on their environment and they learn through their experiences rather than just hearing and memorizing. Parent-child collaboration is also important as the parent is there to help and encourage the child as they go through the activities, however they need to keep in mind the child’s autonomy to make the decisions about how they progress through the story and figure things out on their own.Alex’s New Castle focuses on topics in math, science and art, taken from a standard first grade curriculum. Learning takes place in the contexts of purchasing items from a market (learning about counting money), gardening (learning about plant growth), and painting (learning about color theory). Each activity happens in a different room of the castle, where the physical page for the room is scanned by the app and shows the corresponding activity in AR. Although the activities are separate, the storyline is intertwined with actions from one room affecting another, for example the child cannot buy items from the market until they have found the money in the treasure chest. Although there are only three main activities for now there is a lot of room for expansion to include other subjects as well as continued activities in the existing rooms, like being able to buy more different types of seeds from the market to plant in the garden.