Ravasio,P., Enjoji, H. and Sugimoto, M.: SketchMap - A Collaborative Tool to Learn Basic Cartographical Concepts. COOP '06 – 7th International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems, May 9-12 2006, Provence, France. SketchMap A Collaborative Tool to Learn Basic Cartographical Concepts Pamela Ravasio a,1 Vincent Tscherter b , Hitoshi Enjoji a and Masanori Sugimoto a a Interaction Technology Lab, University of Tokyo, Japan b University of Applied Educational Sciences, Solothurn, Switzerland Abstract. In this paper we present SketchMap, a system that integrates face-to-face and distributed collaboration of primary school children. We use small-scale tablet PCs for the distributed field work and an additional normal PC with data projector for the face-to-face situation. Children use SketchMap for creating their ‘personal environment’ map of an area around their school - a task habitually tackled when being introduced for the first time to the basic concepts of cartography. While the SketchMap version described in this paper focuses on the mentioned task, the system itself can easily be extended or adapted to other related scenarios such as instruction on traffic behavior or on civil protection measures. First user experiences with SketchMap showed that there certainly remains work ahead, but that already now it supports users well in their distributed drawing and face-to-face collaborative ‘map merging’ tasks. Keywords. Collaboration, Distribution, Face-to-Face, Education, School, Mobile Computing, Distributed System, Map Sketching, Sketching Tool 1. Introduction In the field of CSCL (Computer Supported Collaborative Learning) research, systems have naturally been inspired by ideas originating from pedagogy [16]. Often though the system were targeted towards young adults at university or similar educational facilities, and the focus was set upon supporting team work similar to the one found in industrial settings, where geographically wide spread teams, compound of several domain experts, have driven the necessity for and the requirements towards such systems. Looking at the pre-university level however, and the educational activities performed in this context, it becomes clear that here collaboration occurs mostly co-located, face-to-face, with occasional ‘excursions’ to distributed locations around school. The support of such combined kinds of collaboration is in our eyes still an important issue. As an example, take one of the most widely spread approaches for introducing children to the world of cartography: Let them create a map of their ‘personal’ environment. For this task, the pupils of a class - divided into several groups of one or more students each - create map sketches of different sectors around their school. Using a set of drawing primitives, they pin down relevant points such as street crossings, traffic lights, deviations, or a scary dog. Once that all the sketches have been completed using paper and pencil, the different groups meet in one place and attempt to 1 Correspondence to: Pamela Ravasio, Kiban-Building 7G6, Department of Frontier Informatics, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, University of Tokyo, 5-1-5 Kashiwanoha, Kashiwa, Chiba 277-8561, Japan. Tel. & Fax: ++81-4-7136- 3891; E-mail: ravasio@itl.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp.