Musex: a system for supporting children's collaborative learning in a museum with PDAs

Using handheld devices in educational environments is being recognized as a suitable method. Due to drastic revisions in Japanese curriculum standards for elementary school children, new theories, systems and practices to support children in their learning are required. Therefore, we focused attention on science museums, which are different learning environments to schools. In this paper, we propose a system called Musex which is used to support children in learning and exploring collaboratively in a museum with two PDAs (personal digital assistants). Through Musex, children can collaboratively challenge questions which are related to exhibitions. Solving the questions lets children pay attention to exhibitions naturally and understand contents of exhibitions more. We evaluated the system in a Japanese science museum and confirmed its effectiveness.