**4.8 Showcase example: Educational eco-spatial Interface3**

The emerging field of architectural educational interfaces present**s** new opportunities to address younger generations and non-expert public as early as possible. Such systems are only part of a wider selection of means and tools for teaching and transmitting spatial topics to non-experts (other efforts that follow the more traditional path of learning include i.e. Arkki school of architecture for children and youth, Finland, Meskanen, 2007).

The showcased prototypical Educational Eco-spatial Interface (Juvancic & Zupancic, 2008) represents architectural educational interfaces 1) for communicating professional values, issues, problematics, 2) for showing simplified cause-and-effect relationships and 3) for teaching responsible spatial acting through selected cases and learning-by-doing tasks. It acts as the helping hand for teachers who are already besieged with other equally important topics, overcoming the knowledge and time constriction barriers in formal education practices. Being part of the experiment, the elements of interfaces (the contents included) were tested through their use in educational settings in primary schools. Also tested were the independent variables of interface characteristics: ways of navigation, ways of narration and ways of interaction with elements. The system openness rate and rate of immersion were presumed constant (closed system and non-immersive interface) as was the contents (identical in all cases).
