Background
Children's Obesity & its facilitation by Online Advertising
Children today are overweight and heading for early diabetes and increased risk of heart disease. Governments have invested into well-meaning projects, which aimed to change children’s eating habits or encourage them to take more exercise and restrictions have been imposed for food and soft drink product advertisements to children in broadcast or non-broadcast media. However, they failed to curb online advertising of junk foods to children. Obese children or children of low media literacy are particularly vulnerable to advertising and need to be shielded against unhealthy influences by developing an understanding on how advertisements work and how they influence their choices.
Aims and Benefits
Empowering Teachers
The ANEMELO project will initiate an attractive and innovative Augmented Reality-based didactic approach for children 11 - 16 years old in five (5) countries (UK, Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Poland) to be administered by teachers or social workers working with them. The project starts on September 2017 and ends on August 2019.
Educating Children
The game-based learning approach will help children develop an interest in and a deeper understanding of (1) online advertising by enabling them to identify relevant techniques promoting junk food or participating in online activities of food manufacturing companies; (2) the origins of obesity; and (3) the healthier lifestyle options available to counteract against obesity.
Innovation
Open & Innovative AR-Enabled Curriculum, Training & Learning
- A new curriculum introducing an innovative combination of ICT tools and a workshop-based experiential delivery methodology;
- A Teachers Handbook. A complete training methodology for teachers to improve their knowledge with regards to online marketing and advertising and their relation to obesity. The delivery methodology will be facilitated through workshops that will target children of ages between 11-16 years old. The handbook will also include didactic material and multimedia instructions so that teachers will be able to organize and conduct workshops by themselves;
- An Augmented Reality Content Management System (AR CMS) delivering a complete game to be used by teachers to co-create new scenarios with children or create new games (storyboards and images);
- Hands-on training workshops in 5 countries (UK, CYPRUS, GREECE, ITALY, POLAND) will be organized targeting teachers with the intention of equipping them with the necessary skills and competences in reaching out to children and help them enhance their media literacy and adopt a healthier lifestyle;
- A virtual space, the ANEMELO_Academy, providing the necessary infrastructure to facilitate an extended network of stakeholders, such as schools, children's associations, policy makers, parents and commercial organisations producing serious games and AR games for educational purposes, who will adopt the results of the project and continue to maintain and develop them past the funding period.
