# Situated Psychological Agents: A Methodology for Educational Games
## 4 SPA Applications to EG
### Block Magic  
Block Magic [46; 47] is an educational platform that exploits augmented reality based on RFID/NFC technology that allows building custom educational games with both physical and digital components. It consists of a set of magic blocks, a magic board/tablet device, and specific software (Figure 4). Magic blocks are an augmented version of traditional logic blocks, widespread structured materials, classically used in education. The technologies employed to augment are RFID/NFC sensors that allow to unite the manipulative approach, stimulated by logic blocks, and touch-screen technologies. An RFID system consists of an antenna and a transceiver, which can read the radio frequency and transfer the information to a device, and a small and low-cost tag, which is an integrated circuit containing the RF circuitry and information to be transmitted. This configuration permits to a PC or a table, with BM software installed on, to connect with BM Magic Table, another relevant BM material. The Magic Table has a hidden antenna that recognizes each block, sends a signal to the PC/tablets, and produces feedback coherently with pupils learning path. Each augmented magic block had an integrated/attached passive RFID sensor for wireless identification of every single block. A specially designed wireless RFID reader device, an active board, is used, which can read the RFID of a block and transmit the result to the BM software engine. On the software side, the BM augmented blocks together with the Magic Table are complemented with software that includes a series of already-developed exercises and an authoring tool to build new ones. The BM software engine is mainly formed by two parts: The first one is devoted to receiving input from the active board and generating an \"action\" (aural and visual). These actions implement the direct feedback the user can receive interacting with the system. This feedback is regulated by an embedded intelligent tutoring system [48; 49] that ensures autonomous interaction between the user and the system, receiving active support, corrective indications, feedback, and positive reinforcement from the digital assistant on the outcome of the actions performed. Figure 4: The Block Magic kit. The second software component is devoted to customization, and it is dedicated to teachers, educators, etc., allowing them to build their exercises to be proposed to the child, focusing the attention on the skills the child needs to train more. In BM, the narrative comprises the plot, the scenario, the characters, the setting and has the task of attracting the player and filling the game experience with meaning. The appropriate narrative allows to attract the child, so to immerse him/her in a completely different environment, that is relevant in every educational context. The narrative level exercises a framing effect on the core level. The core is configured as an interaction between the player, the human OSA (or the players in a collective scenario), the teacher, another human OSA, and the artificial BSA. The interactions are mediated by physical materials: The Magic blocks. Block Magic Representation in SPA Terms  
From BM general description, we can move to BM description in terms of the SPA approach. As represented in Figure 5, in this case, we have two human OSA interacting: A learner and a teacher. Many important functions are played by the BSA, which is artificial. It provides feedback to the player (arc on the left) during the game, it affects the human OSA teacher proposing existing exercises and recording learner's interaction, it has an indirect effect on the learner OSA through the trainer OSA. The BSA is built according to adaptive tutoring systems theories [46; 47]. To validate the SPA approach, some data were collected with BM users. During the BM project (www.blockmagic.eu), trials were run in four schools in European Countries and involved about 250 students and 10 teachers of primary school and kindergarten.