missimo: Deine Mission Morgen is a project founded by the charitable private foundation Kaiserschild Stiftung for children aged eight to ten in Austria: it offers a playful hands-on learning experience on STEAM, delivered to schools in rural Austria via truck.
The Ars Electronica Futurelab’s tasks in the realization of missimo ranged from the development of the didactic installations and workshop kits, from choosing the equipment as well as the technical infrastructure to the entire usability and graphic design. The missimo experience starts with a teacher training session, then the missimo truck visits the primary school. Six main installations that provide different learning experiences and narratives reside inside the truck. At the center is a microcontroller—a so-called micro:bit—for each child. Inside the micro:bit “lives” an avatar that can be personalized and accompanies the students from station to station. On their journey through the main installations, the children can customize the LEDs on their micro:bit, build circuits with motors, solve labyrinths by programming their virtual robot, train an AI via webcam for a game of rock paper scissors and learn about different sensors by caring for plants in a playful way. As a special keepsake, they can also take home a snapshot of themselves and their robot.
Finally, a workshop kit is distributed to the school classes. This kit contains components that enable experiments and trials to be carried out in class—closely linked to the information and simulation possibilities in the truck. missimo will be operated by the Kaiserschild Stiftung for several years, supported by the Ars Electronica Center—to bring the fun of learning and low-threshold access to technology even closer to elementary school students all across Austria.
missimo, Photo: Domas Schwarz
missimo, Photo: Domas Schwarz
missimo, Photo: Magdalena Sick-Leitner