Title
Children as players, modders, and creators of simulation games: A design for making sense of complex real-world problems Children as players, modders and creators of simulation games
Abstract
Could computational thinking be a strong tool for children to understand complex 21st-century issues? Our knowledge is limited since most designs focus on sequential programming and on the cognitive aspects of computational thinking. This paper discusses a design that integrates ill-structured socio-scientific issues with programming and other computational concepts, in a playful and meaningful context. The design, called ChoiCo (Choices with Consequences), builds on the idea of "integrated affordances" that enables layered computational access, allowing children to be players and designers of choice-driven simulation games. We elaborate on a design-based research that studied children's activity, who progressively played, modified and co-created games that simulated realworld issues. We describe four strategies developed by the children to make sense of the simulated problems through a systems thinking approach. We also discuss how they formulated these strategies by utilizing the affordances of map design, data manipulation and coding.
Year
DOI
Venue
2021
10.1145/3459990.3460706
IDC '21: PROCEEDINGS OF INTERACTION DESIGN AND CHILDREN 2021
Keywords
DocType
Citations 
computational thinking, game-based learning, real-world problems, block-based programming, systems thinking, simulation games
Conference
0
PageRank 
References 
Authors
0.34
0
2
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Marianthi Grizioti100.34
Chronis Kynigos25313.82