Grupo Alarcos · Conference paper · 2023
Atenea: Digitalizing Educational Games with Light Tables
Along the last years, the use of technology has started at younger ages. It is also known that it is used by parents to calm their children down and by teachers to make learning more attractive for children. It seems natural to combine and put technology and teaching together to improve the learning process. This is the core principle of Atenea. It is based on technology that is already used in classrooms, such as projectors, laptops or touch screens. But these, now classical, technologies are not the only ones that appear there; light tables have also been already included. But their classical use is by placing different figures on them, even sand. Atenea consists of the digitization of light tables, allowing children to play games. The main goal is to provide teachers with an innovative tool for teaching. It is also aimed at providing a more attractive and enjoyable way of learning. The system makes children feel like they are using the light table in a very similar way as if it was not digitalized. It follows the principles of calm technology. To evaluate the quality in usability terms, the SUS questionary has been used, which shows very good results.