OriGami: A mobile geogame for spatial literacy

Abstract

Spatial literacy, the skill of learning about and improving interaction with one’s surroundings, is an inherently transdisciplinary competency transcending from STEM to social sciences and arts. Spatial literacy is central in primary and secondary school curricula in many countries, and not only possesses the potentials of individual success but also fosters the importance of spatial information use in society. There is wide agreement on the transdisciplinary power of spatial thinking: Goodchild (2006) pointed out its importance for curricula in all subjects: from STEM, to social sciences and arts. Many tasks in the most recent PISA study (OECD 2014) on general problem-solving refer to spatial problems. The National Research Council (NRC) report “Learning to think spatially” suggests solutions for geographic information systems (GIS) as a support system to think spatially (Committee on Support for Thinking Spatially 2006). Approaches using minimal GIS for all grade levels at school, when particular spatial concepts were used incidentally, follow this direction in several studies (Bartoschek et al. 2010; Battersby et al. 2006; Marsh et al. 2007). Curricula all over the world reflect spatial competency training, although there are large differences in the way countries implemented this; the spatial tasks, level of abstraction, and learning stage of lessons in spatial literacy differ substantially.