Learning by Playing. An Edutainment 3D Environment for Schools

SEE (concerning "Dead Sea Scrolls" and related issues such as history, religion, philosophy, literature, etc.), is a very effective learning environment intended for a worldwide audience, of students from 12 to 19 years of age. A massive experimental phase in Spring 2003 (involving more than 700 students and 40 teachers, from Italy and Israel) has shown an impressive educational impact, far beyond our own expectations. Among the most surprising findings were the wide-range impact (from motivation, to organization of learning activities, to interest in the subject, etc.) and the effects that were felt far beyond the limit of the experience: it propagated to other learning activities and it lasted long after the SEE experience was completed. The paper describes SEE, with its 3D world shared over the Internet, the remarkable educational benefits detected during the experimental delivery, and a tentative analysis of the possible causes explaining such effectiveness.