TEACHING AND LEARNING ON SCIENCES CURRICULAR UNITS ORIENTED BY EDUCATIONAL GAMES

Research has sought new strategies and methods for teaching and learning processes. One of them, although yet quite shy, is the incorporation of digital games into school environments, especially in learning activities in classrooms. Studies show that digital games, usually designed simply by games, are increasingly being used by a lot of people, of all age groups, with the fastest-growing media and entertainment industry. People all over the world spend billions of hours a week playing on some device just for fun. However, when it comes for dedicating this time to another activity, such as studying, we do not notice the same interest. The inclusion of games in the classroom is still limited to a few of initiatives that often do not have any direct correspondence to the topics and contents approached. Having all this in mind, we designed and developed a game that seeks to have fun when studying, making the teaching-learning process more attractive and effective both for teachers and students, and at the same time to provide a user-friendly toll for supporting knowledge acquisition and improving expertize in some specific domains. In this case, we focus our attention conceiving an educational Web based game to be used in learning environments, in the classrooms or at home, having its application field in Sciences courses. To demonstrate the utility and effectiveness of the application of the game in teaching-learning processes, we prepared a testing platform for the game that was used and explored by several classes in three schools of the municipal network of Santa Cruz do Sul, Brazil, having a target audience of the 9th year of the elementary school in sciences, with an average participation of 16 students per class. The process was supported by the teachers of the municipal school network and by computer labs personnel of each school. The experimental evaluation of the educational game, as well as the feedback received from the students, suggest that educational games should be inserted in the classroom, once which promote an increase interest by students in the contents addressed in sciences curricular units, as well as a greater commitment when submitted to learning activities. We also noted that the students that reached the highest scoring average were the ones that had the most contact with the educational game.