The Castelló d’Empúries Ecomuseum-Flour Mill has set up the initiative “The land of the flour sprites”, a place for playing and learning. Firstly: what is a flour sprite? It is a sprite that comes out of the flour. This is the element that links the topics of the Ecomuseum-Flour Mill, a museum belonging to the Museum of Science and Technology Territorial Network, which brings us closer to how flour is made and the related production processes.

The land of the flour sprites is a virtual world. Through a lovely illustration that acts as an interface to develop different on-line games, aspiring e-flour sprites can search for the flour sprites hidden in the territory with binoculars, participate in different games, and learn about different aspects covered by the ecomuseum. All the contents revolve around the process of flour preparation, changes in land use and the agrarian systems in the marsh area of Empordà.

This type of project, which uses virtual platforms to provide contents and entertainment, make it possible to bring the culture closer to younger publics, more used to interacting with spaces on the Internet than older groups of people such as their parents or grandparents.

On 20th November, the “Cultural Heritage in the classroom through ICT” Congress was held in Palamós, where one of the speakers, Miquel Navarro, a Secondary School teacher from Palamós, talked about moodle platforms in education. What are the moodle platforms?

Moodle is an English acronym that stands for Module Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment. It refers to a virtual environment in which all the members can build contents and comment on other users' contents.

Moodle platforms are virtual environments based on two ideas related to education. On the one hand, the idea that knowledge is built in the mind of the students, and on the other, that learning can be cooperative. Thus, it is a virtual platform designed for a set of users to generate contents that can be commented on and expanded by other users.

At the same time, it offers a set of resources that may aid this learning, such as chats, wikis, calendars, discussion rooms and a long list of further possibilities.

Nevertheless, a tool like this is a supplement to teaching in the classroom or the visit to the museum, and need not replace them.

For more information see the official website: http://moodle.org/ where you will find materials to start up the platform as well as its underpinning philosophy and its advantages.