USING VIRTUAL WORLDS TO DEVELOP THINKING IN PRESCHOOL CHILDREN

During the first seven years of his life, the child receives a huge amount of knowledge about the world around him. The development of the child's thinking during this period and the results of his knowledge of the world around him affect the further educational activities of the preschooler. Thanks to the development of thinking, a child is able to imagine an image of an object and its properties in the absence of the object itself, based only on previously received information. In a child in the early and preschool years of life, game is the main activity for forming a personality. Didactic games facilitate the process of all-round development of children. Various tasks solved in didactic games are presented for children in an interesting and attractive form of activity. In a computer game, using simulation, it becomes possible to demonstrate objects and phenomena that are inaccessible to a child in the real world. The use of didactic computer games not only increases the preschooler's motivation to learn new material, but also contributes to the development of thinking. An educational computer game acts as a mentor for a child. However, the lack of communication with a living, and not virtual, mentor causes a negative effect both on the development of the child's speech and the formation of his communicative abilities. Therefore, a computer game cannot be perceived as a complete alternative to the classical means of teaching and educating preschoolers.

Motivational Elements in Computer Games for Learning Mathematics

One of the main drawbacks of delivering new teaching lessons in e-learning systems is the lack of motivation for using those systems. This paper analyses which elements of computer games for learning mathematics have a beneficial effect on intrinsic motivation and give students continuous feedback in order to improve the learning process. While the control group has access to the basic version of the educational computer game, the experimental group uses the version enriched with additional motivational elements which include enhanced graphics for indulging in the game, messages of support while playing the game, and the possibility to compare results with fellow peers in terms of trophies and medals won.

From Gaming to Computational Thinking: An Adaptive Educational Computer Game-Based Learning Approach

Educational games have been increasingly used to improve students’ computational thinking. However, most existing games have focused on the theoretical knowledge of computational thinking, ignoring the development of computational thinking skills. Moreover, there is a lack of integration of adaptivity into educational computer games for computational thinking, which is crucial to addressing individual needs in developing computational thinking skills. In this study, we present an adaptive educational computer game, called AutoThinking, for developing students’ computational thinking skills in addition to their conceptual knowledge. To evaluate the effects of the game, we conducted an experimental study with 79 elementary school students in Estonia, where the experimental group learned with AutoThinking, while the control group used a traditional technology-enhanced learning approach. Our findings show that learning with the adaptive educational computer game significantly improved students’ computational thinking related to both conceptual knowledge and skills. Moreover, students using the adaptive educational computer game showed a significantly higher level of interest, satisfaction, flow state, and technology acceptance in learning computational thinking. Implications of the findings are also discussed.

DiG-DAG: Didactic Game for Divulgation of Understandable Geophysics

<p>Geophysics is the application of the laws and techniques of physics to disclose knowledge about the Earth’s dynamic processes and subsurface structure. It explores phenomena such as earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis to improve our understanding of the Earth’s physical processes. Effective mitigation of risks from catastrophic geophysics hazards requires knowledge and understanding of natural processes. Scientific divulgation deals with the communication of knowledge previously produced in scientific contexts to a non-expert massive audience.  One of the difficulties science divulgators need to overcome is to explain specific concepts, even complex, from a given discipline in a language simple and understandable, maintaining scientific correctness, and enhance skills, knowledge and competences of their interlocutors.</p><p>Considering that, nowadays, digital technologies play a large role in young people’s lives and games are directly connected to the life of adolescents, we realized an educational videogame to teach geophysics and Earth sciences to low and high-school students; an educational computer game, serious game, where electronic medium with all the characteristic of a gaming environment convey formative outcomes. The starting point is that technologies are systems of open possibilities that can be effectively integrated with innovative methods of education necessary to promote more effective, efficient, attractive and durable learning. In fact, the ardour and enthusiasm that digital games evoke in teenagers has brought many researchers, school leaders and teachers to the question “how video games” can be used to engage young people and support their learning.</p><p>A first stage of the project of Virtual Reality, "Journey inside the volcano", were presented at several scientific divulgative events, such as the ESA Living Planet Symposium, The National Geographic Festival delle Scienze, the September 29th INGV Open Day, involving more that a thousand users and receiving appreciation from the public. We present the serious game and the relate appreciation analysis based on guestbook comments compiled at the end of the experience. The comments reveal a great level of appreciation, involvements and emotions, and margins of improvement. The results foster us to improve the project developing other geophysical topics.</p>