Tidy City in New Zealand

Recently Melanie Middlemiss and her collegues at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand were host to a group of high school students taking part in the OUASSA camp (http://ouassa.otago.ac.nz [1]). During their stay the students took part in a number of activities to get a feel for what Information Science is all about, and to experience some of the cool technologies that their students are working with. As such, Melanie Middlemiss and her collegues showed them a number of mobile augmented reality and mixed reality games – one of which was TidyCity:

"We set up two challenges for the students – Albany Street Challenge, and Campus Challenge. The first was a simple game that contained 5 riddles that were situated along Albany Street in the Otago University campus. The idea of this challenge was for the students to get the feel for the software and devices that they were using. We thought that they might have had some issues and needed a while to come to grips with the technology, but they raced off in small groups and had the challenge completed in no time!

The second challenge was designed to test the students’ knowledge of the University of Otago campus. These students had only spent a few days on campus earlier in the year, so they were not particularly familiar with the area. This challenge gave them a chance to wander around campus and find some locations that they may not have otherwise visited. The groups had a great time with this challenge and solved nearly all of the riddles – unfortunately we were a little constrained on time by this stage.

The students all reported back that they had a great time using the TidyCity application and completing the challenges that we had set out. They felt that it was a fun and novel way to become familiar with a new location. As far as the Department of Information Science staff are concerned, it was nice and easy to set up the challenges using the TidyCity Scout application on the mobile device, and we hope to use the application again when we have visiting students on campus."

Students puzzling about a TidyCity riddle. (Photo: University of Otago)

Students discussing solution possibilities (Photo: University of Otago)

Student playing TidyCity in Dunedin, New Zealand (Photo: University of Otago)