Design and Development

The design and development of the edutainment game authoring tool is being guided and influenced by the needs and the ability of the tool itself to address the problems indicated in the previous section. We have identified the following three contexts as most relevant to initiates our tool design – programming context, computer game context and game design context.

Firstly, in the programming context, we want to shape the process of programming more like the thinking of children. Children will be given programming tasks designed to investigate their understanding of mechanisms in a form of game making that they have to program and design. The purpose is that children could develop skills that are related to programming including learning about mechanisms and behaviors. These programming skills can be seen as the target domain of the children’s way of learning.

Secondly, in computer games, children will learn the basic aspects and rules of the game itself very fast. By creating edutainment games, children do not only gain authoring or programming skills whilst participating in the development process, they will also learn about many aspects of the edutainment domain, such as physics, mathematics, arts and science. In other words, learning programming while creating a game is not only good for increasing their problem solving skills, but also good because it requires knowledge about the games’ topic and thus motivates learning.

Lastly, in game design, children will use the basic elements of project management in their game making. These elements include planning the games, design, build, gameplay testing, and re-design. Designing a game perhaps can help children to validate their game requirements and explore possible ways for particular solutions.