Magika, a Multisensory Environment for Play, Education and Inclusion

Abstract

Magika is an interactive Multisensory Environment that enables new forms of playful interventions for children, especially those with Special Education Needs. Designed in cooperation with more than 30 specialists at local care centers and primary schools, Magika integrates digital worlds projected on the wall and the floor with a gamut of "smart" physical objects (toys, ambient lights, materials, and various connected appliances) to enable tactile, auditory, visual, and olfactory stimuli. The room is connected with an interface for educators that enables them to: control the level of stimuli and their progression; define and share a countless number of game-based learning activities; customize such activities to the evolving needs of each child. This paper describes Magika and discusses its potential benefits for play, education and inclusion. CCS CONCEPTS • Applied computing → Interactive learning environments; • Human-centered computing → Displays and imagers; Accessibility systems and tools; • Social and professional topics → People with disabilities; Children; • Hardware → Tactile and hand-based interfaces; • Computer systems organization → Sensors and actuators.

Embodied Learning in Immersive Smart Spaces

“…These devices can interpret the learner's body movements and gestures (e.g., clicking, grasping, pointing, walking, or balancing) to interact with the multimedia contents [6,43,56]. Some very recent implementations of embodied learning solutions see the use of entire environments orchestrating large screens and motion-based technologies, in order to achieve a greater learning effectiveness [12,1,47,31,30,3]. Within this domain, a large number of studies have been performed incorporating embodied activities (in some cases involving minimal movements [4,15,25,33,42]) in various field, such as mathematics [81,72,59,19], physics [9,37,7,36,45,60,61], chemistry [46], science [2,16], vocabulary and language acquisition [57,69], reading comprehension [35,34], sound concepts [10,67,39,41].…”

Modeling Interactive Smart Spaces

“…We exemplify the concepts introduced in the previous sections by modeling the salient interaction features of the Magic Room. This is a sophisticated multisensory smart space for children's play, learning, and rehabilitation that we developed in the context of a national project and installed at two local schools and two therapeutic centers in Italy [13][14][15][16]. Children's experiences in the Magic Room have various goals: i) promoting well-being and relaxation; ii) providing controlled stimulation for the vestibular, proprioceptive and tactile sensory systems to improve "sensory integration" capability; iii) developing children's cognitive skills through learning-by-doing and embodied learning approaches.…”

Prototyping IoT-Based Virtual Environments: An Approach toward the Sustainable Remote Management of Distributed Mulsemedia Setups

“…Electrocardiogram devices, wearable sensors, location systems and machine learning have been associated to IoT to monitor patients' heart-rate while performing distinct physical activities. Targeting therapeutic interventions, but also novel didactic methods, Magika was reported as an inclusive system that allows educators to interact with children by stimulating their tactile, auditory, visual, and olfactory senses, through IoT-based digital projections and physical smart objects [23]. Other studies that use multisensory interaction in citizen science stream monitoring training have also been reported [24].…”