Post-it notes: supporting teachers in authoring vocabulary game contents

In this work, we present Post-it Notes, a system for supporting vocabulary acquisition in a foreign language for primary school children. The system consists of an authoring tool designed for teachers and a mobile application for students. The authoring tool is a web application for creating language learning materials. It supports inserting terms, each one defining a specific meaning of a word, specifying their syntax, definition, phonetics, pronunciation and descriptive image. The correspondences between terms represent translations between languages. Furthermore, the authoring tool allows teachers to create stories, organised as a sequence of sentences, including a set of hidden words for reinforcing their usage. Once published, the story is accessible from the mobile application, which assists children in following the plot. The learning game consists of guessing the missing words by taking pictures of augmented objects distributed in the surrounding environment. A similar interface allows the student to rehearse specific term sets, attaching visual markers to real objects. We evaluated the authoring tool with teachers. The results show both good usability and good acceptance. In addition, we also carried out an observational study in a primary school, describing the children’s behaviour in interacting with the mobile application and group dynamics.