Combining Augmented Reality and Fairy Tales to Teach Science to Primary School Students: Teachers' Experience from the Fairy Tale Science Augmented (FAnTASIA) Project

The use of storytelling has long been covering a wide variety of subjects across different levels of education, from preschool and K12 to professional training. Regardless of the content being taught, storytelling methods are assumed to catch students' attention and involve both their cognitive and affective skills. Educational literature has also collected evidence for effectiveness of the use of augmented reality (AR) technology in promoting greater academic achievement and engagement among students, com-pared with traditional and other digital media-related lessons. Based on existing research, aim of the Fairy Tale Science Augmented (FAnTASIA) project was to design a multi-lingual educational package to integrate storytelling and AR to support the teaching of science concepts and skills in children aged from 5 to 12 years. The present paper first provides a description of the FAnTASIA project and the developed educational package. Following, the paper presents the research design implemented to evaluate the effectiveness of the package in promoting children's knowledge and cognitive skills and users' (students and teachers) satisfaction with its use. In this regard, the final section describes teachers' experience with the use of the educational kit from the results of a questionnaire specifically administered to this purpose.