Week 13 Reflection: Tweaking software for children!

This week’s class was rather interesting as we were introduced with children software in the form of CDs. The software were integrated with games which I find to be fascinating and captivating, especially through the eyes of young learners.

Our task was to analyze the games from certain points of view like the colour and audio qualities and whether it was appropriate for achieving certain objectives in lessons. From my opinion, the games are rich with a brilliant mixture of colours which are also accompanied with soothing and light music. The games that we used for example allows children to explore a variety of sound effects of various musical instruments and I believe that this is important for training pupils to learn through one of their five senses which is channeling auditory input through their hearing. This on the other hand is a more soothing way of teaching pupils (aside from the traditional chalk and talk) to identify different sound patters, thus sharpening their listening skills holistically.

Since young learners have the tendency to always wanting to play around, the implementation of healthy learning-oriented games were necessary in order to mold children interest towards the aim of ‘playing while learning’. I believe that incorporating learning-based games are crucial for changing the perspective that children can also acquire skills necessary for them to function in society while in the process of playing games. The idea was that in order for pupils to open their hearts to learning was that first they need some sort of stimulation to them interested and prepare their mind for the framework of learning of the day. Games that reflect the life a child in schools are bound to be meaningful and familiar, for example like the game Freddy Fish where the characters are school children trying to solve daily problems in their life. Thus, such game serves as a guide to educate pupils on what should a child do in order not to get trouble, for example in Freddy Fish, the game gives a choice on whether to become honest to their parents or the otherwise, and consequences of each action children take will be displayed. By analyzing for themselves the consequences, children can learn which action to be taken later on in real life. This analyzing attempts promote children CCTS (critical and creative thinking skills) as according to Skinner’s Behaviourism theory, children tend to learn primarily from ‘cause and effect’ scenarios. In addition, the characters are very cute and colourful which I believe will be a good source of motivation for children to be indulged in the lesson, hence allowing them to become active explorers of knowledge.