Evaluation of videogames for mathematics education with young children

Abstract

Changes in technology and lifestyle bring about changes in the way humans acquire knowledge. In many cases, traditional methods of teaching are proving unsuccessful. These changes bring about a challenge: how can knowledge best be transmitted, ensuring that the students understand the material, and are able to successfully utilize it when solving problems? This challenge is very pressing in the area of mathematics, a subject that is often accompanied by high levels of anxiety in students. By utilizing a novel approach that combines game play, simple computer programming, and topics in mathematics, this challenge may be overcome. In this paper, the use of Microsoft's Kodu video game platform in the learning process is analyzed based on an application in a group of twenty students in their fourth and fifth years of primary education. The results of this workshop are also analyzed in terms of effectiveness and appeal to students. Overall, the workshop has been a success, as the students evaluated it as effective and entertaining.

Experiencia STEM: desarrollo del pensamiento matemático a través de videojuegos meteorológicos

“…Como apoyo al desarrollo de las competencias matemáticas potencializadas a través de la meteorología, surgen los videojuegos como elemento que permite al niño extrapolar sus competencias meteorológicas a otros escenarios que generan interacción y aplicación de los pensamientos matemáticos (Alzahrani, 2013), los cuales se clasifican en cinco: numérico, como habilidad para hacer juicios matemáticos y entregar operaciones aritméticas; espacial, como la capacidad para manipular objetos en representaciones mentales de carácter cognitivo; métrico, que permite cuantificar numéricamente las dimensiones de la geometría; aleatorio, que posibilita el análisis de datos que proporciona el mundo físico, y variacional,que facilita relacionar cambios en las magnitudes de manera individual o en conjunto (men, 1998).…”

Arithmetic Bird: a game for training mathematical operations

“…The studies show that game-based learning has been used to teach a variety of subjects to children and young people in primary school with mathematics, science, language and social studies being the most popular [12,13]. But there are other studies, for example to higher education to strengthen programming skills [14] or to supporting language learning [15], etc.…”