Abstract:

The videogame’s proposal “Enigmatronic” comes up as a way to help teachers in the teaching process of two specific topics: mechanic energy and electric energy, the first one, mechanic energy, which works with the concepts of simple machines, inclined plane, levers and their 3 grades, pulleys and gears. The second one which refers to electric energy, the concepts applied are: basic concepts of electricity, Ohm law, conductance, resistors and diodes. Hence, this videogame has as a main objective to encourage students to understand and use the concepts related to mechanic and electric energy, and implicitly, to strengthen the capacity to solve problems and to plan strategies

The Videogame “Enigmatronic” includes some levels which can be overtaken by riddles solutions, based on physics problems, where students should use simple machines and electricity components. Through these riddles, students analyze problems that have to be resolved, and apply different elements to solve the level and according to their knowledge and the individual interpretation of the problem, after that, students choose elements to let them to solve the problem in an assertive way, this problem doesn´t have an unique solution, it depends of each students perspective, but the ideal way to solve this kind of problems is to applying the less number of elements and time.

Enigmatronic, was designed as a didactic material support for teachers in order to it to be implemented as an aditional tool during the classes, mainly in tecnology classes,
Because this subject has the proposal of encouraging students to analyze, keep and use the concepts in the problems solutions and in that way, they can build their own knowledge, and the teachers only are strategies creators which are proposed by using the resources teacher can count on. According to this, the videogame gets students to interact with objects that are not with them in a tangible way, but they will be capable of seing and manipulating through a digital representation with all its elements and function. It is also important to say that teachers can use it as a diagnostic test to identify the students´ knowledge or it can be used as a feedback to evidence what concepts should be improved.

Enigmatronic is classified as a didactic material because of the improvement of mechanic and electric energy teaching process by means of the illustration ease in the concepts; besides the videogame allows the experimentation and encourages students to investigate.
Enigmatronic wants to give a general vision of the mechanic energy, electric and its aplication, where the new concepts are based on the concepts learnt previously, linking them in a progressive sequence that let them start with the more simple elements and evolve to the more complex. As a result of this, it is possible to notice that students are more focused on their tasks because of their awareness about what they already know to solve next challenges.

Keywords:

Videogame, simple machine, education, electricity, energy.