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Incorporated, a worldwide network of science museums and related institutions.
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 Hi, Barry:
Your interesting blog interview with Kevin Miklasz appears to focus on
games played outside the museum, but in the end Kevin concludes: "the
future I envision: using the digital science games on iPads as an active
learning module to engage visitors and provide them with situated meaning." Per
that future, I bring to your attention Maryland Science Center's recently
launched iPhone/Android app game called PlanetMania, designed by EduWeb, to
encourage youth to interact directly with MSC's permanent astrobiology
exhibit. Our evaluation (see informalscience.org) showed that PlanetMania
met its goal to make the mostly text/image-based exhibit more accessible,
engaging, and understandable for preteen visitors.  One barrier to
developing a game  for a museum setting as noted in past research is
the tendency
for young visitors to become immersed in a game and miss the museum
exhibits themselves; that was not the case with the design of PlanetMania.  And
an added value is that PlanetMania is designed to be re-applied to entirely
different exhibits by populating the game with different content
(e.g., BodyMania;
DinosaurMania etc).

 Barbara N. Flagg, Ed.D.
Director, Multimedia Research
33 Browns Lane
Bellport, NY 11713-2735
631-286-8925

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