Santiago de Compostela app for iPhone and iPad

Digital Mysteries: Santiago de Compostela is a unique app for 7-11 year olds which allows pairs to work simultaneously on one iPad, solving a ‘mystery story’ about why a girl called Sarah chooses to travel there. Students must discuss and collaborate along the way.

The task is mapped to the RE and geography curriculum with a few points that can be linked to Spanish. Children are introduced to a girl called Sarah via several slips of illustrated information. These cover a bit about her background, her hobbies, her friends and of course, Santiago de Compostela and the history it holds. The students must read and sort through the slips together to come up with an answer to the question “Why did Sarah visit Santiago de Compostela?”

Fictional character Sarah is making a trip to Santiago de Compostela in the North of Spain. In this mystery, children will learn about possible reasons for Sarah’s visit; making reference to the famous Catholic pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela across the North of Spain. Sarah’s background is given; including her love of travelling with friends; desire to visit different parts of Spain; her penfriend who lives in Santiago de Compostela, and her Catholic faith.

Users move through an easy-to-follow, three stage process – they must first read through the slips, organise them into groups, then move to the final stage where they lay out the slips in a chain and use sticky tapes and notes to help make sense of everything. Although the question is open-ended, students learn lots of useful information along the way, all while developing key skills of collaboration and problem-solving.

There are many reasons why Sarah could have visited. Was it because of religion? The desire to travel? Spending time with friends? Or visiting a friend? All reasons could be correct / valid. Its all about which one the students think is correct, and the arguments they put forward to support this.

After the students have went through the problem-solving process, they can then go through the Reflection Stage. This allows them to play back what they have done, discuss their choices and share with others what they thought during the process and whether after reflection, they still think the same. This can be done alone, in their groups, with their teacher or as a whole class. A PDF report is also generated as a summary of the session, and is available to print or share.

Levels

There are three difficulty levels to this task. On easy there are 13 slips provided, on medium there are 19 and on hard there are 24. Different or fewer hints are also given, depending on the difficulty level. The level can be changed in the ‘settings’ section of the app.

During this mystery the children learn about:

*the traditions of the Camino de Santiago as well as the modern journey which people make.
*a region of Spain including some Spanish vocabulary.
*some aspects of the geography of Spain.

They are introduced to modern pilgrimage which is built upon traditions from the past.

How can I try other mysteries?

At the bottom of the app details tab, tap ‘Developer Apps’ to view our current range. There are apps for computing, history, geography, maths, science, citizenship and two bundles: Shakespeare and primary computing.