Educational Games for Early Childhood - Using Tabletop Surface Computers for Teaching the Arabic Alphabet

Pantelis M. Papadopoulos, Zeinab Ibrahim, Andreas Karatsolis

2015

Abstract

This paper presents initial evaluation regarding the use of simple educational games on tabletop surface computers to teach Kindergarten students in Qatar the Arabic alphabet. This effort is part of the “Arabiyyatii” research project, a 3-year endeavor aimed to teach 5-year-olds Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). The paper describes a naturalistic study design, following the activities of 18 students for a period of 9 weeks in the project. All students were native speakers of the Qatari dialect and they were early users of similar surface technologies. The paper presents three of the games available to the students, along with data collected from system log files and class observations. Result analysis suggests that these kinds of games could be useful in (a) enhancing students’ engagement in language learning, (b) increasing their exposure to MSA, and (c) developing their vocabulary.

References

  1. Behnstedt, P. (2006). Dialect Geography. In Encyclopedia of Arabic Language and Linguistics (Vol. 1, pp. 583-593). Leiden: Brill.
  2. Ferguson, C., 1991. Epilogue: Diglossia Revisited. Southwest Journal of Linguistics, 10(1), 214.
  3. Gulf News (2014, January 23). Qatar uses interactive tool to teach Standard Arabic. Gulf News. Retrieved January 23, 2014, from http://gulfnews.com/news/ gulf/qatar/qatar-uses-interactive-tool-to-teachstandard-arabic-1.1281158.
  4. Gulf Times (2014, January 26). CMUQ Team Develops New Method to Teach Arabic. Gulf Times, p. 10. Retrieved January 26, 2014, from http://www.gulftimes.com/Mobile/Qatar/178/details/379019/CMUQteam-develops-new-method-to-teach-Arabic.
  5. Hainey, T., Connolly, T.M., Stansfield, M., and Boyle, E.A., 2011. Evaluation of a game to teach requirements collection and analysis in software engineering at tertiary education level. Comput. Educ., 56(1), 21-35.
  6. Ibrahim, Z., 2000. Myths About Arabic Revisited. AlArabiyya, 33, 13-27.
  7. Ibrahim, Z., 2008. Lexical Separation: A Consequence of Diglossia. Cambridge University Symposium, Cambridge.
  8. Ibrahim, Z., 2009. Beyond Lexical Variation in Modern Standard Arabic. London: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
  9. Ibrahim, Z., 2013. Love - Fear Relationship: Arab Attitudes toward the Arabic Language. In The Eminent Scholars Series: Interculturalism. Essays in honor of Professor Mohamed Enani. 339-360.
  10. Kebritchi, M., and Hirumi, A., 2008. Examining the pedagogical foundations of modern educational computer games. Comput. Educ., 51(4), 1729-1743.
  11. Kerne, A., Koh, E., Dworaczyk, B., Choi, H., Smith, S., Hill, and R., Albea, J., 2006. Supporting Creative Learning Experience with Compositions of Image and Text Surrogates. In Proc. World Conference on Educational Multimedia, Hypermedia and Telecommunications. Chesapeake, VA: AACE, 2567- 2574.
  12. Meluso, A., Zheng, M., Spires, H.A., and Lester, J., 2012. Enhancing 5th graders' science content knowledge and self-efficacy through game-based learning. Comput. Educ., 59(2), 497-504.
  13. Morris, M.R., Piper, A.M., Cassanego, T., and Winograd, T., 2005. Supporting Cooperative Language Learning: Issues in Interface Design for an Interactive Table. Stanford University. Technical Report.
  14. Papadopoulos, P. M., Ibrahim, Z., & Karatsolis, A. (2014). Teaching the Arabic Alphabet to Kindergarteners - Writing Activities on Paper and Surface Computers. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - CSEDU 2014, Barcelona, Spain. DOI: 10.5220/0004942204330439.
  15. Papastergiou, M., 2009. Digital Game-Based Learning in high school Computer Science education: Impact on educational effectiveness and student motivation. Comput. Educ., 52(1), 1-12.
  16. Piper, A.M. (2008). Cognitive and Pedagogical Benefits of Multimodal Tabletop Displays. Position paper presented at the Workshop on Shared Interfaces for Learning.
  17. Saiegh-Haddad, E., 2007. Linguistic constraints on children's ability to isolate phonemes in Arabic. Applied Psycholinguistics, 28, 605-625.
  18. Vangsnes, V., Økland, N.T.G., and Krumsvik, R., 2012. Computer games in pre-school settings: Didactical challenges when commercial educational computer games are implemented in kindergartens. Comput. Educ., 58(4), 1138-1148.
Download


Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

M. Papadopoulos P., Ibrahim Z. and Karatsolis A. (2015). Educational Games for Early Childhood - Using Tabletop Surface Computers for Teaching the Arabic Alphabet . In Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1: CSEDU, ISBN 978-989-758-107-6, pages 130-138. DOI: 10.5220/0005471701300138


in Bibtex Style

@conference{csedu15,
author={Pantelis M. Papadopoulos and Zeinab Ibrahim and Andreas Karatsolis},
title={Educational Games for Early Childhood - Using Tabletop Surface Computers for Teaching the Arabic Alphabet},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1: CSEDU,},
year={2015},
pages={130-138},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0005471701300138},
isbn={978-989-758-107-6},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Computer Supported Education - Volume 1: CSEDU,
TI - Educational Games for Early Childhood - Using Tabletop Surface Computers for Teaching the Arabic Alphabet
SN - 978-989-758-107-6
AU - M. Papadopoulos P.
AU - Ibrahim Z.
AU - Karatsolis A.
PY - 2015
SP - 130
EP - 138
DO - 10.5220/0005471701300138