Abstract:

The pedagogical potential of new technologies, despite being recognized, still needs to be deepened in pedagogical practices. Many students have more access to technologies in the outdoors than in the school environment. This causes a distancing of the school environment from social reality.

We emphasize the need for students to have a critical knowledge of digital media, so that digital technologies do not become a mere information tool. Similarly, if we want to use computer games, the internet, or other digital media to teach, we need to prepare students to understand and critique these media; we cannot simply consider them as a neutral means of providing information and we should not use them in a merely functional or instrumental way. One of the ways to use technologies, extrapolating instrumental use, is to work with the constructivist approach coupled with creative learning. An interesting possibility to perform this articulation is through the programming of digital games, which enchant the students for their attractive power, besides favoring the learning of the contents that are working, due to the demands to create the plot of the game.

Digital information and communication technologies (ICT) can be important allies in science teaching for children, since they allow a diversified work. From this perspective, we report an experience of creating digital games by students of higher education in a Brazilian university. In it, the teacher had an important role of designer of the activity, promoting the creation of a constructionist environment through a project that involved creative learning in the construction of digital games for the web. The theme chosen for this research covered the content of chemistry and the periodic table and the use of web development languages for building digital games. The analyses revealed signs that the proposal favored the learning of the contents of sciences, as well as their interactions with the technologies. We observe these learning from the re-elaboration of previous knowledge toward scientific knowledge, acquisition of vocabulary, and greater autonomy in decision making.

In this work, we will discuss how the production of digital games, together with a constructional proposal and game-based learning, meaningful play interaction, can favor digital literacy and scientific literacy. In order to do so, we will discuss the relationship between constructionism and creative learning, we will discuss aspects about the development of digital literacy and scientific literacy, as well as the importance of creating digital games for the development of classes that favor the experience of moments when the spiral of creative learning can be truly realized. Then we show the project results with a few screenshots from the games developed by the students along the process. And, finally, we present the section with a conclusion discussing how students were involved in actions that favored both scientific and digital literacy, recognizing themselves as game producers, rich in context and attractive and meaningful proposals.

Keywords:

Game-based learning, Education in Sciences, IT Education.