This project was developed to connect our urban audience, particularly 21st century youth, where they live – online and wired in – as a way of guiding them to Library resources. This "app" is a gateway to the library’s historical collections housed in its Hartford History Center, building strongly on the “power of place” and the city’s rich cultural heritage, as well as a tool for individual and collective exploration in the realm of 21st century new media education. The Internet redefines the playing field for learning. According to the 2010 MacArthur Foundation report “Re-Imagining Learning in the 21st Century,” what we do with digital media and how we expand opportunities for peer-based learning will transform our traditional view of “education.” We navigate complex social and technical worlds by participating online and learning from and being motivated by our peers in this 21st century public space. But most teens are not taking full advantage of the Internet. This is especially true for urban youth. Increasingly, those who have the education, skills, financial resources, and time required to navigate the sea of cultural choice will gain access to new cultural opportunities. Those citizens who have fewer resources and knowledge about how to navigate the cultural system — will increasingly rely on the cultural fare offered to them by consolidated media and entertainment conglomerates.

The geolocation application seemed a good fit for what we hoped would be an innovative product. We could engage the students in the real world and simultaneously overlay information about the locations using geolocation tagging and gps functionality inherent to smart phones. Teens would be in the park and engaged with additional “augmented reality” information. Several concepts were explored, with the partners concluding that gamification was the best approach to engaging Hartford teens. Gamification would allow for broad participation and enable us to present a platform for research and exploration as part of a mystery and a quest. The game allows for players to stop the action and go back to the game without starting over. We then created a back story that would fit the history of Hartford, the park, the eras we were focusing on. This took some time as we sketched out a storyboard and dialogue for the App itself. After several rounds of edits, the team submitted the completed first draft to the development and design team for a prototype. After several weeks of development, the application development team had a working prototype of the rudimentary functions of the application and some of the elements of the story. The team then tested the application over the course of several months and refined and added more functions and features. One example of a feature was the multimedia voices for the mentor characters. Adding voices to the characters helped create a more immersive and realistic experience for players.

Pre- and post-assessment surveys will measure the success of this tool with respect to knowledge gains in awareness of library resources and the in the development of new media skills. Surveys indicated that the target group did have access to smart phone technology with data plans and that leveraging this technology would allow for a more engaging and entertaining application. While a website would be an appropriate platform for more serious endeavors, it would not be able to “meet” the youth in their world because web experiences are optimized for traditional PCs and laptops, not the smart devices most kids use. In addition, even a rich web multimedia experience pales in comparison to exploring the real Keney Park. As with all development, no application can be designed to run equally well on all systems. Very old iOS and Android devices were problematic. One challenge we discovered was the temperamental nature of GPS technology, especially on older smart phones and inside of buildings. Testing revealed that reliable GPS would only be available for a small subset of players. Development was set back as the script team and the application development team had to go back to redesign the game to incorporate QR code reading technology. In addition, we learned from testing small groups of our target audience, not everyone knows how to read a map. We decided that the application should include more explicit instruction to explain how to read maps and more specifically, read the maps within the game.