An interactive educational tool based on augmented reality, mobile applications and comic strips to teach children the Cañari and Inca cultures in the Ecuadorian context

According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), due of the rapidity of cultural change, safeguarding the world's tangible and intangible cultural heritage has become an increasingly complex and multidimensional undertaking. Therefore, it is fundamental for the children and youth of today to learn the culture, values, and traditions that define their identity as well as the identity of their nation. For these reasons in this paper, we present an interactive app aimed at supporting both teaching and rescuing the heritage of Cañari and Inca indigenous cultures. Our mobile app can be used at children's home or during the guided visits of one of the most important museums in Ecuador: the Pumapungo Museum. Likewise, the app can identify QR codes to show multimedia material to children, contains several 3D objects that are presented using Augmented Reality (AR), and incorporates a Natural Language Processing (NLP) module to determine the children's learning progress. In this line, it is important mentioning that children use the app to create small »stories» about the learned concepts. The app was tested in real guided visits in the museum with 30 children from three different schools (low and middle -income), and the results show high levels of interest in the contents and the app.