Abstract:

Mobile devices have been inserted prematurely into children. However, only a few mobile apps used by children are capable of stimulating autonomy, memory, critical thinking or creativity. When used for educational purposes, such devices can aid in the construction of knowledge, becoming a didactic support tool. Educational games can help the learning process in a playful way, because they require decisions and solutions of challenges that promote the construction of thought. Games can be developed in several technologies, among them the augmented reality through mobile devices. Augmented reality performs the integration of virtual objects into the real environment using computer vision techniques. One of the advantages of augmented reality is the insertion of complementary information into real scenes. In this context, this paper presents a proposal for an educational game for mobile devices based on augmented reality. This game may help in the literacy of children aged 6 to 8 years. The proposed solution consists of a mobile application, letter blocks and a docking base. The game consists in forming words using blocks of letters. The application shows a sequence of object recognition challenges. First, the drawing of an object is displayed on the screen. The child must recognize this object and form the corresponding word using the letter blocks. The blocks should be placed in the docking base which is composed of pre-defined spaces. Then the device camera should be positioned on the docking base, covering the formed word. At this point, the application performs the word recognition. If the word formed matches the object presented in the challenge, the 3D model of that object is displayed on the screen. The objects are presented in order of word writing difficulty. The words differ in the amount of syllables, in order to increase the difficulty of each challenge. The letter blocks and docking base were modeled and 3D printed. The results showed the correct functioning of word recognition through the application. Thus, it is expected that the proposed educational game can be used in the future as a didactic support tool, helping children's literacy.

Keywords:

Educational game, augmented reality, child literacy.