‘Geoliteracy’, ‘Cartology’, Cognitive Development, and a Mobile Game

Abstract

Some researches in education science develop educative games on mobile devices for letting elementary school students play outdoor to learn geographic facts, concepts, and patterns. The challenge is about improving their geographic literacy and fluency, or ‘geoliteracy’, and their map-reading competencies, called cartology, before adolescence. There a critical stumbling ‘threshold’ can impede their geospatial cognitive development, which result in a majority of adults being not geographically literate neither efficient, in real-life context, for reading and using maps. Designing a mobile educative serious game implies applying conceptual and pragmatic methods for both learning and teaching geospatial competencies accordingly to school curriculum. The theoretical framework presented links maps to cartographical semiology, the children’s cognitive development stages for geospatial representation, and an experiential learning cycle model. The latter sequentially supports three main cartographic processes of map-making: reflexive visualization, and map-reading, which sustain any geographical reasoning. The mobile game proposed combines components of increasing complexity where the map plays the main role in the course of different activities: scenarios of typical “rounds” and rules of the game within local terrain; types of geometrical and geospatial trajectories to trace and follow while playing; and specific themes relevant to school subjects. Thus, geographical discussions stop worrying about where, to worry about the reason of situations and the occurrence of phenomena.