Holdsworth, Jason J., and Lui, Siu Man (2009) GPS-enabled mobiles for learning shortest paths: a pilot study. In: Proceedings of Fourth International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games (1) pp. 86-90. From: Fourth International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games, 26 - 30 April 2009, Orlando, Florida, USA.

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Abstract

Recent GPS-enabled mobile phones provide a rich and novel platform for exploring new kinds of educational software. Moreover, powerful high-level programming languages such as Python allow rapid development of learning tools that take advantage of mobile technology. This paper reports on a recent pilot study using mobile phones as situated learning tools. The study focused on expressing Dijkstra's algorithm for solving the classical graph theory problem, "single source shortest paths", in the form of problem-based learning and kinesthetic learning for non-IT university-level students. The objective of the pilot study was to find out if non-IT students could learn how to find shortest paths for simple graphs using mobile phone technology. The mobile phone's internal GPS system was used to guide how a student explored the problem, as they developed an understanding about shortest paths. The pilot study results indicate students enjoyed the experience and learned about finding shortest paths.

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