In this paper, we present Virtual Touch, a toolkit that allows the development of educational activities through a mixed reality environment such that, using various tangible elements, the interconnection of a virtual world with the real world is enabled. The main goal of Virtual Touch is to facilitate the installation, configuration and programming of different types of technologies, abstracting the creator of educational applications from the technical details involving the use of tangible interfaces and virtual worlds. Therefore, it is specially designed to enable teachers to themselves create educational activities for their students in a simple way, taking into account that teachers generally lack advanced knowledge in computer programming and electronics. The toolkit has been used to develop various educational applications that have been tested in two secondary education high schools in Spain.

During the last decade some technologies have achieved the necessary maturity to allow the widespread emergence of Virtual Worlds; many people are living an alternative life in them. One objective of this paper is to argue that the blending of real and virtual worlds has been happening for centuries, and in fact is the mark of “civilization”. This project presents a proposal to improve student motivation in the classroom, through a new form of recreation of a mixed reality environment. To this end, two applications have been created that work together between the real environment and the virtual environment: these applications are called “Virtual Craft” and “Virtual Touch”. Virtual Craft is related with the real world and Virtual Touch is related with the virtual world. These applications are in constant communication with each other, since both students and teachers carry out actions that influence the real or virtual world. A gamification mechanics was used in the recreated environment, in order to motivate the students to carry out the activities assigned by the teacher. For the evaluation of the proposal, a pilot experiment with Virtual Craft was carried out in a Secondary Educational Center in Valls (Spain).

Different studies show the benefits of using virtual worlds for educational purposes, where you can develop a wide variety of innovative teaching and learning activities. During the last six years we have been developing educational applications using virtual worlds and mixed reality. In this paper we summarize our experiences from the point of view of the design of the educational materials that have been developed in these virtual worlds.

This article describes in detail the main achievements in authoring and reuse of educational materials within the eMadrid project.