Mobile Learning Games for Primary Education.

Saved in:

Bibliographic Details
Title:	Mobile Learning Games for Primary Education.
Authors:	Shabalina, Olga¹ O.A.Shabalina@gmail.com, Vorobkalov, Pavel¹ pavor84@gmail.com, Kataev, Alexander¹ alexander.kataev@gmail.com, Tarasenko, Alexey¹ alexeytarasenkov@gmail.com, Arsentiev, Alexander¹ aleksander.arsentev@gmail.com
Source:	Proceedings of the European Conference on Games Based Learning. 2010, p350-359. 10p. 8 Color Photographs, 1 Diagram, 1 Chart, 2 Maps.
Subject Terms:	Mobile learning, Primary education, Teaching methods, Activity programs in education, *Educational games, Mobile games
Abstract:	What words (excluding hello)? often start every lesson at school. A teacher asks children to switch off their mobile phones. It is almost the same as to taking away a child's favorite toy. This means for children that something boring and incomprehensible would start now. This paper describes the state of the art in the field of mLearning, a new direction in the field of effective teaching, that could be used in primary education. Several approaches, methods and techniques used in modern mobile educational games are analysed with a view to making mobile educational games more entertaining and to incorporate 'subtle' learning in them. Existing research in the area of learning game development for mobile platforms and popular educational games are analyzed to determine, the main factors leading to the popularity and wide expansion of several major games.. The peculiarities of mobile devices and modern technologies are described, followed by a proposal for a set of techniques that take them into account in order to produce addictive and efficient learning games. The idea to using existing concepts in popular entertainment games and to build a game world around several well-known and admired characters is discussed. The concept of a game series "The Termite Planet" which includes games for teaching mathematics, language and geography in a primary school is presented. Each game in the series has an entertaining part based on the existing popular non-educational games developed by authors. All the games in the series are built around a universal game engine for mobile platforms called "The Termite Engine". The Architecture of the engine, the main technologies and development decisions are reported. The paper concludes with a discussion of the traits and benefits of using the proposed games for teaching in primary school, the perspectives of educational games development and the steps still to be taken to achieve the main aim of finding ways of developing learning games for mobile platforms that would be at least as attractive as pure entertainment games and would increase children's motivation to study subjects at school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
	Copyright of Proceedings of the European Conference on Games Based Learning is the property of Academic Conferences & Publishing International Ltd. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
Database:	Education Research Complete

Description
Abstract:	What words (excluding hello)? often start every lesson at school. A teacher asks children to switch off their mobile phones. It is almost the same as to taking away a child's favorite toy. This means for children that something boring and incomprehensible would start now. This paper describes the state of the art in the field of mLearning, a new direction in the field of effective teaching, that could be used in primary education. Several approaches, methods and techniques used in modern mobile educational games are analysed with a view to making mobile educational games more entertaining and to incorporate 'subtle' learning in them. Existing research in the area of learning game development for mobile platforms and popular educational games are analyzed to determine, the main factors leading to the popularity and wide expansion of several major games.. The peculiarities of mobile devices and modern technologies are described, followed by a proposal for a set of techniques that take them into account in order to produce addictive and efficient learning games. The idea to using existing concepts in popular entertainment games and to build a game world around several well-known and admired characters is discussed. The concept of a game series "The Termite Planet" which includes games for teaching mathematics, language and geography in a primary school is presented. Each game in the series has an entertaining part based on the existing popular non-educational games developed by authors. All the games in the series are built around a universal game engine for mobile platforms called "The Termite Engine". The Architecture of the engine, the main technologies and development decisions are reported. The paper concludes with a discussion of the traits and benefits of using the proposed games for teaching in primary school, the perspectives of educational games development and the steps still to be taken to achieve the main aim of finding ways of developing learning games for mobile platforms that would be at least as attractive as pure entertainment games and would increase children's motivation to study subjects at school. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
ISSN:	20490992