Educational Computer Games - Blog Posts

Schools: environmental education and computer games in learning

Why is school important for teaching kids about climate change and how can our game help with that?

Everything children learn at school allows them to, one day, choose the future they want to live in. Schools also teach children how to put themselves to the test. The child strives to achieve a goal and is rewarded based on what has been done. In this way they understand that no goal is achieved without their commitment. Additionally, it is at school that the child lays the foundations to define the adult he/she will one day become.

The importance of environmental education

Children and young people have a growing awareness of the threat that climate change represents for our world and for their future, as demonstrated in recent months by the youth movement for the climate born thanks to Greta Thunberg. These children, if properly educated and prepared, can play a really important role in the fight against the environmental crisis as they would be able to influence the decisions of their parents. According to the study Children can foster climate change concern among their parents, published by a group of sociologists and ecologists from North Carolina state university in the journal Nature Climate Change.

This new study reveals that educating children about the dangers of climate change raises their parents' concerns about the environmental emergency. According to the researchers, environmental education in schools, especially about the climate, is essential to raise awareness among young people and, consequently, their parents. "There is a large body of work showing that children can influence parental behavior and positions on environmental and social issues - said one of the authors of the study, Danielle Lawson - but this is the first experimental study showing that climate education for children increases parents' concern about climate change ”. The fact that children are able to influence adults can be explained by the banal adage that children are the voice of truth. The perception of climate change in the very young would be particularly credible since, unlike adults, they are less susceptible to the influence of the common worldview or political context. Thanks to the candor of their vision, children would be able to inspire adults and increase their concern about the ongoing climate crisis, triggering an intergenerational learning process.

To carry out the experimental study, the researchers worked with 238 students, aged between 10 and 14, and 292 parents. All of these people were initially tested to measure their levels of concern about climate change. After that some of these kids (166) took a course on climate change, while the rest did not. The study found an increase in environmental concerns in both groups, but "much more pronounced in the families of the children who took the course," said Danielle Lawson.

The advantages of computer games in learning

Climate change is one of the huge global problems young children will have to tackle in their near future . They will have to be creative thinkers in a globalized world having to work together with other people from different countries, cultures and realities. Computer games can help them with this (As Shaffer writes in his book about How Computer Games Help Children Learn). They can help young children learn to think like scientists, engineers, urban planners, journalists, lawyers, and other innovative professionals, giving them the tools they need to survive in a changing world. Studies show that playing video games encourages critical thinking, improves motor skills and enhances key social skills like leadership and team building. They're also effective tools for teaching educational skills like algebra, biology and coding, as gaming helps to deepen learning and understanding. In the science classroom for example where our game would fit in perfectly, computer games can present unique opportunities for teachers and students, as they involve activities of observation, interpretation, simulation, inference, prediction, hypothesis, classification, and communication (Lowe, 1988). Computer games can make the scientific inquiry process more engaging for kids by providing a rich and interactive environment that challenges them to solve a complex problem in a meaningful context and enables them to gather information and evidence from multiple sources using authentic tools (An, 2015). Computer games give students the special opportunity to learn by doing and help them develop transferable knowledge and skills by allowing them to practice newly learned skills in a variety of situations.