SketchMap: Supporting Children in Drawing 'Personal Environment Maps'
1

Pamela Ravasio1, Vincent Tscherter2, Masanori Sugimoto1
Department of Frontier Informatics, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, University of Tokyo2
University of Applied Educational Sciences, Solothurn Switzerland

Abstract
SketchMap is a system intended for use by primaryschool children in order to draw their 'personal environ­ment maps'. This task is traditionally tackled in thecourse of introducing them to the fundamentals of carto­
graphy. The system integrates face-to-face and distribu­
ted collaboration scenarios that are part of this task, andoffers the children a simple means to get accustomed tonovel technology such as WLAN and GPS without being
distracted from their learning goals.
Introduction
The field of CSCL (Computer Supported CollaborativeLearning) draws from pedagogical principles [1], as well
as from the insights gained from computer supported
collaborative work (CSCW) and hence the world ofbusiness. As a consequence, most systems are targeted
towards adults working in distributed teams in far apartlocations. In pre-university levels however, the situations
is entirely different. Here, collaboration usually happens
in a mix of face-to-face and distributed situations, where
the latter generally encompasses distances of up to a few
hundred meters. Consider, as an example, the approach
usually employed in primary schools to introduce
children to the basics of cartography: The creation of a'personal environment map'. During this educational
activity, the pupils of a class are divided into various
groups of one or more student each. Each group creates asketch of one sector of the area around school, and once
this is done, they all meet at one place to merge thesesketches into a single large one.
SketchMap
SketchMap is our intent to offer a system that supports
children in their task of creating a 'personal environment
map', and relieves them from the problems inherent inusing paper and pencil for the task (difference in scaleand orientation, topological and proportional inconsisten­cies, varying primitives) - freeing their time and resour­ces to concentrate on the drawing task and the discus­
sions when merging their sketches. We further allow thechildren a first hands-on experience with latest genera­tion technology such as WLAN, GPS.
SketchMap's realisation is based on 2 principles: colla­boration and individualisation. While the first calls fordistribution, the second does for the use of a single com­puter per pupil. SketchMap as a consequence, is imple­
mented as a distributed WLAN-based client-server MVC
architecture. It offers 2 different user-interfaces: One de­signed for drawing on small scale tablet PCs that take ad­vantage of pen-based interaction; the other is designedfor the task of merging a set of partial sketches into asingle large one and is intended to run on an averagecomputer (Illustration 1).

Illustration 1: SketchMap's sketch drawing ((A) and (B))
and sketch merging interface (center).

The drawing primitives offered are a simplified version(Illustration 2) - for the benefit of the children - of those
employed by international Boy Scout organisations.

Illustration 2: SketchMap's drawing primitives

At the time of writing, SketchMap covers the possibili­ties also at hand when using paper and pencil procedures,and improves them by offering simple graphical opera­
tions, such as e.g. scaling and rotating entire sketches inorder to make them 'fit' together. Functionality that iscurrently being developed targets aspects such as aware­ness [2] as well as topology preserving transformations
based on the GPS data points which can be introduced by
the children into their sketches. A further topic of ourcurrent research is the development, in collaboration withprimary school teachers, of an entire teaching/learning
unit suitable for use in regular primary school lessons.
Initial Experiences
During its development process, SketchMap is conti­
nuously subject to code reviews, scenario walk- throughs
and expert reviews, in the manner of state-of-the-art usa­
bility procedures. These procedures will remain impor­tant due to the slowly increasing complexity of the soft­
ware.
SketchMap has furthermore been the subject of a firstuser study with university students:
 A team of four students was first introduced toSketchMap.
 They then were given 10 minutes time to 'play' withthe system (drawing and merging interface) as well aswith the tablet PCs it was running on. During thisperiod, the examiner answered any kind of arisingquestions.
 Once that the participants were sufficiently confident
with the system, they were asked to draw, independent­
ly of one another, a single sector of the campus' sur­roundings.
 At his point, a brief but intense discussion arose among
the students in order to determine who would draw
which sector of the area. Once the decision was taken
in mutual agreement, each of them proceeded to exe­cute the task single-handedly.
 When all had finished drawing their respective sector,
the students were asked by the examiner to join in frontof a normal computer and to merge their efforts by cre­ating one single large sketch from the four now com­pleted independent ones.
 To conclude the test and obtain user feedback, a group
discussion was held, wherein the participants answereda range of questions related to usability, and task com­pletion, and pronounced freely any kind of feedback
they felt important to voice.
During the test, the examiner took note of the ongoing
activities. Photographes as well as brief video sequenceswere also taken.
During the group discussion, the team agreed that they
had intuitively understood how to work with SketchMap
and its pen-based interaction approach. They underlinedthat the most collaboration intensive tasks were the mer­ging task and the initial discussion on how to divide andwhom to assign the various sectors. They also stated thatSketchMap supported the merging task - with exceptionof minor usability flaws - well and that it simplified thetask at hand if compared to a potential paper-and-pencil
situation. The team would further like to see the granula­rity of the drawing primitives revised: While in their eyes
everything from a tree to a field of crops classifies as'green space', they would like to see more fine grained
distinctions when it comes to man-made structures (dis­tinguishing e.g. a tennis court and a building). They also
pointed out that they would like to describe individual
parts of their sketches more precisely, e.g. by attachingannotation or even camera-taken pictures or self-drawn
icons to it.
The test gave us the opportunity to expose SketchMap
to a near-reality task, and evaluate our implementation
against the needs that arise in practical application. As aconsequence, we learnt that SketchMap is already now
dealing with much larger amounts of data than we had
expected. As a result, it will be necessary to review thecommunication mechanism between clients and server inorder to make the system faster, more robust and resistentto network instabilities.

pared the achievements of pupils using web based trai­
ning systems in combination with PDAs in the 'integra­
ted study' classroom, outdoors, and in a social education
facility. [4] presented a system that aimed at pupils colla­borating in the design of a town and experience the re­spective environmental implications. Or [5], who deve­
loped a system in which pairs of pupils collaborated tosolve a knowledge quiz about the insights they gained
from the science exhibition in a museum they werevisiting each individually.
Conclusion and Outlook
In this paper we have presented a tool, SketchMap, thataims at supporting primary school children in the cre­ation of a 'personal environment' map. SketchMap com­bines face-to-face and distributed collaboration, while its
interface relies on pen-based interaction and technologies
such as WLAN and GPS.
In an first study, the users agreed on that SketchMap
allowed them to easily pursue their goal; face-to-facecollaboration during map merging using SketchMap wascommented to be an interesting, almost exciting task,
which was also proven by the vivid discussion that tookplace.
The upcoming version of SketchMap, which will incor­
porate an enhanced communication mechanism, will beused for more detailed outdoor studies. It will be of evi­
dent interest, also to compare the procedures observed inthis context to those in place in a pure paper-and-pencil
environment.

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Systems that like SketchMap support both individuali­
sation and collaboration, have in Japan mainly come into
use in the 'integrated study' classroom or in educational
facilities such as museums. Examples here are: [3] com­