Design And Implementation Of An Educational Game For Primary Schools

Introduction

Games offer a unique structure to complement traditional teaching strategies and infuse teaching with energy, spark innovative thinking and provide diversity in teaching methods. Games make learning concepts more palatable for students and supply learners with a platform for their creative thoughts to bounce around. Games encourage creative behaviour and divergent thought and are excellent ice breakers. Games will often act as learning triggers inducing lively discussion on learning concepts amongst students following game play.
As pedagogical devices, games are extremely useful ‐ they can enliven teaching topics and are especially effective for dealing with problem solving and key concepts. Research shows that “games have a special role in building students’ selfconfidence” and “they can reduce the gap between quicker and slower learners”

1.0 Background of the Study

There has been much interest in the potential of console games for learning and teaching in recent years, they are popular with young people. A recent survey carried out for Future lab showed that 79% of 737 children aged five to 15 played computer games at home alone ‘at least a few times a week’ At the same time, a growing number of research studies show that there are educational benefits to be derived from gaming in Classrooms and informally at home. Playing computer games at school is seen to be one of a number of technologically oriented activities which can overcome what has been referred to as the ’digital disconnect’ whereby children engage in rich and extensive uses of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) at home but this knowledge and experience is then kept outside of the school gates (Buckingham, 2007).

1.1 Problem Statement

The traditional learning system, little time is often left for practice since a teacher has to deliver a fixed number of concepts within a limited time. Most classroom activities are sufficed to the presentation stage only while practice is left for the learners to do as homework. This strategy does not allow for students to experiment with new concepts. Their learning is put on a halt at a certain stage and they end up cramming concepts which invariably unable to produce anything fruitful. Furthermore, many learners might get stuck while doing problem sets at home and this too may hinder their performances.

1.2 Aim and Objectives of the Study

The aim of this work is to develop learning software than can be used to provide easy solution in verbal reasoning as a subject in primary schools and the specific objectives are to:

Study and analyze the existing system.

Design an improved system.

Implement the newly designed system.

Test for the functionality of the newly implemented system.

1.3 Motivation

In this millennium, modern technology plays an inevitable role in our lives and to redesign learning process. The idea to take on this project work was born as a result of the urge to find a solution to the short comings found in conventional classroom system and improves on the existing standard education in Nigeria and its Diaspora.

1.4 Review of Methodology

The following methods will be adopted in this work:

Related literatures will be reviewed.

Application will be design using UML.

Design in (1) above will be implemented using JAVA programming language

1.5 Scope and Limitation of the Study

The scope of this research is the development of a game-based educational learning system to primary school pupils.
The software scope will be limited to a single subject (Verbal Reasoning), as this project work is meant to serve as a prototype that can be used to convince stakeholders on the efficacies of the use of computer game in education.

1.6 Expected Contribution to Knowledge

This study will enhance both pupils and teachers in making learning activities easier by allowing learning to be manifested on application games. This study will also reduce the number of failure among pupils by providing learning facilities easily accessible to every pupils.