History and Cartography Meet Youth Through Digital Technology

This document presents a case study of a Greek vocational high school project in which students designed a three-dimensional educational game on the Roblox platform, set in a reconstructed Athens during the June 1863 civil unrest. The project was a collaboration among the Vocational Senior High School of Kamatero, the Historical Archive of the National Bank of Greece, and the Onassis Foundation, and it was motivated by the Foundation's "Hack the Map: Imaginary Worlds" competition. The game, titled "Thieves and Policemen in the newly established Greek city-state: Iouniana," is structured as four difficulty-rated levels with map-piece collection and in-game currency, drawing on archival sources to ground its historical setting.

The authors frame the initiative as an integration of project-based and game-based learning across history and information technology. Students worked in research, scriptwriting, 3D modeling, programming, and presentation teams, following Scrum methodology under teacher guidance. The stated aims include fostering historical consciousness among students from low-income backgrounds and easing teacher burnout through collaborative, practice-oriented teaching.

The project won first prize in the "3D Game" category of the Onassis competition, and the authors report gains in collaboration, computational thinking, and historical awareness. These conclusions are qualitative, however, as no quantitative outcome data are provided to measure learning effects.

The work's theoretical grounding rests on a body of research on game-based and gamified learning, including studies of programming education outcomes, educational game design methodology, stealth assessment of soft skills, and the relationship between game-based learning and 21st-century competencies. The reference list also includes Greek-language scholarship on serious games and embodied digital interaction. One citation on teacher burnout appears misplaced relative to the rest of the bibliography.