Alternative Teaching of History Subject in Primary School: The Case of the 3D HIT Playful Activity

Abstract

History as a school subject is difficult for young pupils, especially when teaching is based on bulky texts and lacks audio-visual auxiliary material. This paper presents a differentiated teaching proposal based on the use of the playful activity ‘3D Heroes Introduce Themselves’ (3D HIT). It is based on the projection of 3d models on mobile devices as augmented spreads on images included in a worksheet. Together with the manipulation of 3d models, students are invited to create digital stories with relevant information. Thus, a final video is created in which heroes and mythical figures from the History subject introduce themselves with the voice of the pupils. The contribution of the activity to the students’ performance and the level of engagement and participation was examined in this study. Also, whether the production of digital narratives in combination with the manipulation of 3d models reinforced the expressiveness of pupils was examined. Observation-based data indicated interesting positive results.