Abstract
From their early age, children are exposed to technology, mainly used for entertainment. It is considered that the current generations possess the so-called lifestyle digital skills (focused on entertainment goals), while their work-related skills are missing. In this paper we describe our approach in changing preschool children’s attitude towards technology by developing and integrating edutainment applications in their teaching-learning activities. The approach was used for preschoolers in the public formal educational system. We describe our experience in designing and implementing edutainment applications over a period of three years, the challenges encountered and the solutions we have used.
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Acknowledgement
We would like to express a special thanks to the kindergarten teachers who guided us through the design process, to the kindergarten management and teaching staff and to the children and their parents participating in our study. We would like to thank to the students for accepting the challenge of designing for a very special kind of users.
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Guran, AM., Cojocar, GS., Moldovan, A. (2020). Play to Learn! Nurturing Fundamental Digital Skills of Romanian Preschoolers by Developing Edutainment Applications. In: Zaphiris, P., Ioannou, A. (eds) Learning and Collaboration Technologies. Human and Technology Ecosystems. HCII 2020. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 12206. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50506-6_17
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