Nirit Glazer
The project aims to develop and test the feasibility of the Gulliver Innovative Learning technology that manages kinesthetic activities using wearable devices, focusing on PlayFlu (www.playflu.com) as the first activity. Future advancements could extend to other scientific and medical phenomena. PlayFlu aims to educate students about the importance of vaccination and to improve the health literacy of young students in a fun and exciting way. At the same time, it also fosters interest and confidence in science and related fields. The activity engages students in physical exercises to model the scientific phenomena of infectious disease transmission. Kids play in a tag-style game after being assigned a health status on their wearable devices: Healthy but unvaccinated, Sick, or Vaccinated. In the game, the sick students (chasers) are trying to infect (tag) healthy students while the vaccinated cohort tries to protect the healthy. PlayFlu aligns with the Next Generation Science Standards to teach the scientific phenomenon of infectious disease and related concepts (e.g., virus, bacteria, living things). Students participate in the scientific practice of modelling a phenomenon and learn the crosscutting cause and effect concept for vaccination and the social significance of vaccines in providing protection to other community individuals.