Example of beacon-based activity

Earlier this week you could read about beacons and what makes them an important part of BEACONING platform. Today we would like to show and explain short demo which was prepared by our technological and learning design partners during BEACONING consortium workshop which took place in Madrid. Please keep in mind that this is only the demo, the final result will most probably be different. All places and people are not real.

Beacons are a great tool to bring context and location based information. With this in mind, we created a demo which was challenging the student to solve an equation. To do so he needed to collect clues which were available after reaching beacon placed in the demo area. This small demo was created using three different push information provided by three different beacons.

The first beacon was placed at starting point which can be blackboard in the classroom or any other place where the teacher will install beacon. Our demo student is Sylvester who is attending the school named after Albert Einstein (as you will see this information is important for demo). Sylvester was asked by the teacher to get to starting location with his mobile device. After getting there his device got Bluetooth signal from beacon and displayed first push information:

As you can see Sylvester was given task: solve the equation. To do this he needs to get to school patron statue which is placed at the entrance of the school. There is a second beacon installed which will provide him with next clue and information. As you can see we start to “move” student around the school. When Sylvester arrived to statue his device got the signal and displayed second push information:

Thanks to second push message Sylvester can start solving equation given as lesson challenge but that’s not all. During this task, he needs to use his mathematic knowledge to solve the simple equation but what is more important he will get to know his school patron history better. Now when Sylvester got his X unknown he is asked to move to the library to receive the last clue which will finally allow him to solve the equation. After arriving at the library the last beacon will send the signal to his device and this message will pop up on the screen:

As you can see the last task is pretty simple. The main purpose of this task was to introduce the student to library area. After counting bookshelves Sylvester will be able to solve the equation from the first message and provide his teacher with the result.

This type of activity can be a great introduction to school grounds for new students. It will allow creating great experiences using location-based technologies – beacons in this case but they can be replaced with QR codes. Stay tuned for more information on BEACONING platform!