Enhancing user experience while gaming in archaeological parks with cellular phones

Traditional visits to archaeological parks, which are usually organized by schools, tend to generate little interest in young students, especially when they are faced with the ruins of ancient settlements whose current appearance no longer reflects their initial purpose. We have designed Explore!, an m-learning system which allows students to visit the park while playing a game. By exploiting the imaging and multimedia capabilities of the latest generation cell phone, the game improves young visitors' experience. In particular, contextual sounds have been integrated to recreate the historical atmosphere: users can hear sounds generated by ancient people engaged in their daily activities. The slim architecture of the system absolves the archaeological park from any need to invest in hardware infrastructure. An Authoring Tool can be used by history experts to implement in Explore! games to be played in different parks. In this demo paper we briefly present the game and the main components of Explore!: 1) the Game Application running on cellular phones, to be used during the game, 2) the Master Application running on a notebook, used by the game master (i.e. a teacher) to perform a reflection phase, which follows the game and 3) the Authoring Tool to modify/create new games