Experiences

Designing a computer game on electricity

Maria Deptuła-Chocholska

Poland

Primary school

ICT

Teaching in class

Direct

How to imagine electricity? Students often have this problem. You can talk about it a lot, draw wiring diagrams, but for many children it is difficult to understand, and what's more, very boring. During classes we discuss technical electrical installations in homes and schools, draw symbols and even the very minds which often causes difficulty. Technical drawing lessons are usually a problem for children and schools do not always have kits to make real electric circuits. Another very important issue is energy saving, i.e. the use of energy saving lamps and equipment, turning off lights in rooms when we leave them. The problem arises only when we ask students whether they comply with these rules at home. It turns out that there is a very big difference between theory and practice. My solution for this problem is to create an interactive game in the Scratch programme. Students divided into groups design games in which players pass routes and mazes, where they get points for putting out light, using renewable energy sources, buying fluorescent lamps. When choosing a standard bulb, or electricity produced from coal they lose points. Scratch is simple to use, intuitive programming environment. It gives a lot of graphics capabilities and is quite attractive even for small children. Programming is carried out in a visual way - the language elements have the shape of puzzles, by dragging them one can create a structure in a specific order. In this way, the code associated with a particular object is created. Objects can react to external events. Appearance of the characters assigned to objects can be selected from the tray, create or import from outside, so one can create very funny stories - of course related to electricity. Such developed games can be used to organize a mini- tournament or even as tests. Scratch can also be used to create interactive electric circuits, in which illuminating light bulbs, or rotating fans replace the boxes with DIY kits. The result - reduced energy bills.