Touching Nametags with NFC Phones: A Playful Approach to Learning to Read

Near Field Communication (NFC) technology was developed for mobile devices from RFID technology. It enables new kinds of learning applications that are based on touching objects with phones. When an object is touched, a phone reads data from the object’s NFC tag. An application interprets the data and acts consequently. We report our first pilot study of an NFC-based learning application that supports children in their efforts in learning to read. We tested the application in one kindergarten with 23 three-tofive-year-old children with their two teachers. The results suggest that NFC is a suitable technology for learning applications and that the tested application had an effect on the children’s emergent letter knowledge although the activity period lasted only for two weeks.