Practical Activity Organization of Primary School Students with using

e-Simulators

Nadiia V. Oleﬁrenko

1 a

, Vira M. Andriievska

1 b

, Nataliia O. Ponomarova

1 c

, Olena O. Gulich

1 d

Lyudmila P. Ostapenko

1 e

and Iryna A. Lyakhova

2 f

H. S. Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical University, 29 Alchevskyh Str., Kharkiv, 61002, Ukraine

State University of Economics and Technology, 5 Stepana Tilhy Str., Kryvyi Rih, 50006, Ukraine

Keywords:

e-Simulators, Young Learners, Primary School.

Abstract:

Ukrainian primary schools are experiencing signiﬁcant changes as to Reform ‘New Ukrainian School’; it re-

ﬂects rapid updating of information technology and high level of children’s informational activity. Nowadays

education has a number of resources to support the teaching and learning for primary school students con-

sidering the fact that this school generates the foundation for student’s success in the contemporary digital

society. Primary schools are basically focused on development of subject knowledge and general study skills.

The article deals with the practical activity organization of primary school students with using e-simulators

as one of resources for developing subject knowledge and general study skills. The examples of using inter-

active e-simulators for young learners by teachers-to-be are demonstrated in the article. The research shows

that interactive e-simulators provide real task variability, uniqueness of exercises, operative assessment of cor-

rection, adjustment of task difﬁculty, shade of competitiveness and game. The paper presents principles of

construction of interactive authors’ e-simulators: developed e-simulators should generate learners’ interest; be

visually presented to create pleasant emotional background; problem deﬁnition should involve learners into

critical analysis of input data as to their adequacy, redundancy, relevance; e-simulators should allow learners

to operate free; the principle of reliance on pedagogical and research tools of personal IT devices means the

recognition of the power of modern personal IT devices and their feasibility of use in the learning process as

effective and affordable tools of educational and research activities. Based on the analysis of existing experi-

ence of using e-simulators in the practice of primary education, we found that for primary school teachers it is

important not only the ability to use ready-made simulators, but also the ability to create ones independently,

improve them, use knowledge of tools and their functional capabilities, select and formulate tasks for young

learners, assess adequately the quality of the developed e-simulators.

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Problem Statement

Quarantine restrictions have exacerbated the chal-

lenges facing Ukraine’s educational institutions. The

need for new approaches to teaching with limited

number of classes remains a problem for a large part

of the educational community. The solution of these

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issues today is impossible without large-scale intro-

duction of e-learning tools, fundamental changes in

approaches to the organization of education in educa-

tional institutions and in each discipline, in particular

the role of classrooms and the effectiveness of inte-

gration of e-learning tools in school lessons (MON,

2020). Against the background of quarantine restric-

tions, in 2020 the Regulation on distance learning of

general secondary education came into force, as well

as methodological recommendations for the organiza-

tion of distance learning at school. The methodical

recommendations indicate that the primary level of

education needs special attention, because it is the pri-

mary school that forms the child’s attitude to school

education, helps to take the ﬁrst steps on this path,

reveals their talents and natural abilities; affects the

382

Oleﬁrenko, N., Andriievska, V., Ponomarova, N., Gulich, O., Ostapenko, L. and Lyakhova, I.

Practical Activity Organization of Primary School Students with using e-Simulators.

DOI: 10.5220/0010932000003364

In Proceedings of the 1st Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology (AET 2020) - Volume 2, pages 382-395

ISBN: 978-989-758-558-6

entire subsequent nature of the student’s relationship

with the learning environment and society.

The main task of the teacher, within the distance

form of organization of education of young learners,

is the methodical design of the educational process as

a sequence of actions and experiences that students

master. In some recommendations (MON, 2020) it

is proposed to plan the remote work of students as

a cyclical sequence of different activities (including

submission of new information, training, practical ex-

ercises, etc.), and the forms of interaction should be

selected depending on tasks, time and technical ca-

pabilities. However, regardless of the form of activ-

ity, the level of readiness for practical online activities

among primary school students is lower than among

secondary school students. There are a number of rea-

sons for this. Let’s cover them.

One group of reasons is related to objective fac-

tors – age. Thus, the processes of restructuring of

mental activity, the transition from visual to verbal-

logical thinking, the change of ﬁgurative and concep-

tual, concrete and abstract components just begin at

primary school. In this perspective, practical online

activities at a particular stage of learning should be

feasible for each student. In addition, the distance

form of organizing the education of primary school

students involves the complication of the information

context, the active inclusion of the child in a certain

information environment, where any material is a cer-

tain interactive information (graphic, textual, associa-

tive, video information, etc.). At the same time, due

to the individual way of perceiving reality, primary

school students have different degrees of readiness to

perceive such information online. You can also iden-

tify the following reasons:

• limited, and sometimes no experience in the use

of distance learning technologies (for example,

experience with virtual boards and placing com-

pleted tasks on them, etc.);

• limited experience of self-establishment by the

student of mobile communication or adjustment

of separate parameters of a network and, as a re-

sult, a delay in access to e-resources in real time;

• time limits that must be observed when organiz-

ing lessons using distance learning technologies.

Such restrictions in the organization of practi-

cal activities narrow the range of practical skills

of students, because some students require addi-

tional time, for example, for reﬂection, reasoning

or in case of difﬁculties require an immediate re-

sponse from the teacher, etc.;

• untimely correction when students perform prac-

tical tasks within distance learning (due to, for ex-

ample, class size, technical malfunctions), which

leads to a delay in the transition of the student to

the next level.

The named reasons condition the need for new ap-

proaches to implementation of information and com-

munications technologies in teaching young learners.

Primary school is focused on the development subject

knowledge and general study skills such as skills of

writing, reading, doing sums, spelling and others, as-

sured command of which is a prerequisite for further

successful studying at school.

Achieving success in building subject and gen-

eral study skills is a natural need of every young

learner. Each child comes to school with an aspira-

tion to be successful and to gain recognition of per-

sonal achievements. For a young learner the expec-

tations of success are connected with the efforts to

gain recognition on the part of people important for

him/her – parents, teachers, principal, classmates and

getting approval from them. Experiencing success by

young learners affects the quality of education, the de-

velopment of the inner child’s world, the formation of

self-conﬁdence.

As we know, success is a feeling of joy, satisfac-

tion from the fact that the result, which the personality

was striving for in his work, either matches his expec-

tations, hopes, or exceeds them. Success is always

connected with actions, it is not an end in itself. This

is the result of achieving the desired goal, accepted,

recognized and meaningful to a child, experience of

feelings of joy after overcoming difﬁculties. Achieve-

ment provides for getting a speciﬁc result, and recog-

nition can be public, local or individual (Romanovsky,

2011). The success supports a child’s interest in learn-

ing, encourages him/her to overcome the difﬁculties,

urges to achieve new goals.

One of the modern ways of forming a general

study and subject skills by primary students are e-

simulators, which are educational software designed

to shape and consolidate practical skills after prelimi-

nary mastering of theoretical data by young learners.

1.2 Recent Work

The literature also holds many studies related to the

positive effects of educational use of information and

communication technology (ICT) in general (Sipil

2014) and cloud technology in particular (Markova

et al., 2019); instructional design principles, their in-

terrelationships, overall process of designing effec-

tive teaching with ICT (Calloway, 2009; Chemerys

et al., 2020), engineering design thinking, teaching

and learning with ICT (Dym et al., 2005).

Some issues about primary learning were dis-

Practical Activity Organization of Primary School Students with using e-Simulators

383

cussed such as developing technological peda-

gogical content knowledge in pre-service science

teachers (Alayyar et al., 2012; Kovshar et al.,

2019); using ICT in primary school curriculum

(www.curriculumonline.ie, 2001); e-learning for pri-

mary teachers (Hughes and Daniels, 2013), using ICT

in distance learning (Rahman, 2014).

We wrote some articles concerning such a signif-

icant investment in the theory as didactic potential of

digital educational resources for young learners (Ole-

ﬁrenko, 2015; Belousova and Oleﬁrenko, 2013); and

in practice as use of GeoGebra in primary students

training (Oleﬁrenko, 2013).

1.3 Methods

Theoretical and empirical methods are used in this

research. Theoretical methods (analysis and synthe-

sis) serve to analyze opportunities, advantages and

disadvantages of e-simulators as new means of prac-

tical activity organization of young learners at pri-

mary school. Empirical methods (observation, test-

ing, pedagogical experiment) provide the experiment

itself, detailed and achievement tests in order to col-

lect data for examining the efﬁciency of use system-

atic e-simulators at primary school.

2 RESULTS

2.1 Interactive Teaching Tools in

Ensuring the Success of Young

Learners in Practical Activities

To educate young learners there are many e-

simulators developed that facilitate the acquisition of

skills in Maths, in ICT, in native language, in foreign

languages, etc. However, e-simulators are relevant

if it allows you to work out exactly what caused the

difﬁculty at a particular lesson, when the speciﬁcs of

teaching material is taken into account, especially the

perception of young learners.

E-simulators unlike traditional manuals provide

real variability of interactive tasks, uniqueness of ex-

ercises designed to form appropriate skills. In partic-

ular, for training young learners in performing calcu-

lations and doing sums, e-simulators are able to gen-

erate an unlimited number of numeric values to each

task type, which allows diversifying the learning ob-

jectives, avoiding memorizing answers.

The advantage of using e-simulators during both

traditional and distance learning of primary school

students is to provide an opportunity to expand

the possibility of presenting educational tasks aimed

at primary school students – to present tasks in

schematic, tabular form (ﬁgures 1, 2).

Figure 1: The task of logical load “Logiclike”.

Figure 2: Exercise for addition “Samouchka”.

An important feature is the adjustment of task dif-

ﬁculty (ﬁgure 3). The difﬁculty level can be preset

designated by a teacher or selected by a learner, can

have several ways of solving (each time you can in-

crease the level of complexity of tasks, offer solutions

to examples that require guesswork, intelligence (ﬁg-

ure 4), thereby stimulating the intellectual feelings of

young students).

Of particular interest there are e-simulators that

implement adaptive algorithms and basing on learn-

ers’ performance of ﬁrst proposed tasks adjusts auto-

matically the level of subsequent tasks. Such adaptive

interactive e-simulators are useful especially in pri-

mary school, because the difference in learners’ back-

ground, in level of their habits and skills is the most

notable among children: in a class there are those

who perform calculations easily, read quickly, etc.,

and those who are only acquainted with basic rules,

learn to form syllables.

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384

Figure 3: Scheme in “Maths-and-games”.

Figure 4: The complex of educational games “Learn”.

Automatic control of the difﬁculty level of tasks

enables a teacher to identify gaps in learners’ knowl-

edge and eliminate them quickly. To learners whose

skills are already formed at a high level, e-simulators

provide an opportunity to test their skills doing ex-

ercises of increased difﬁculty. Thus, tasks for each

learner are in the zone of their proximal development.

E-simulators feature the ability to provide a shade

of competitiveness and gaming to the exercises. It

is worthy of note that game is not the main activ-

ity for primary school children, but it takes a signiﬁ-

cant place in child’s life along with educational activ-

ities. Playful learning requires substantial intellectu-

alization of primary school child’s activities such as

prompt realization of task, analysis of possible solu-

tions, and search for the optimal variant. Moreover,

the game encourages a learner to show initiatives,

to develop activity, stimulates memory development,

initiative thinking, releases emotions.

Using computer can realize the beneﬁts of play-

ful learning to the full extent. Exploring the speciﬁcs

of computer games in education, there are the ben-

eﬁts as we know: increase learning motivation, en-

couragement of initiative and creative thinking, inclu-

sion all learners into activities, getting experience of

cooperation and teamwork, establishment of interdis-

ciplinary connections, creation an informal environ-

ment for learning, favorable conditions for different

strategies formation for solving problems, etc.

The emotional appeal of computer games, com-

petitive game aspect, and variety of events, exciting

plot, realistic graphics, and ability to control charac-

ters by oneself can instigate learners to achieve only

a gaming purpose. Therefore, an important prereq-

uisite for using computer games in education is to

provide conversion of a gaming purpose (to help the

character, to win, to release someone, to get the prize)

into achieving educational goals. For example, within

the electronic simulator “PilasBloques” students are

asked to compile software code for a virtual hero,

which will allow you to manage it (go a certain num-

ber of steps, say hello, etc. (ﬁgure 5).

Digital Mathematical Platform “Matiﬁc” contains

simulators in Mathematics, focused on the organiza-

tion of practical activities of students to add deci-

mal fractions through visual models (ﬁgure 6), adding

three-digit numbers and more. Playful presentation of

a task, its dynamic nature, the practical purpose (to

color a picture, to collect garbage, feed the cat, etc.)

turns a routine work on developing skills into an inter-

esting game that motivates learners to perform typical

tasks. In addition, ability to compare the results of

their own work with other learners’ ones, gives such

activities as sport excitement and an incentive to im-

prove the obtained results.

Among the advantages of using electronic simu-

lators for the organization of practical activities of

young students during both traditional and distance

learning, we also single out the provision of opportu-

nities:

• to provide systematic practical work on solving by

students a large number of similar tasks in a short

time (ﬁgures 7, 8);

• providing an opportunity to organize the activi-

ties of each student on its own trajectory, depend-

ing on his skills, knowledge, the need to deepen

knowledge;

• providing timely assistance (which may be im-

plicit, upon request, provided by the hero of the

program, who accompanies and monitors the long

delay in the exercise, etc.).

It should be noted that the peculiarity of the use

of electronic simulators is the rapid assessment of

student actions. Immediately after completing each

task, the child may receive an appropriate reaction,

which will indicate the correctness of the solution

Practical Activity Organization of Primary School Students with using e-Simulators

385

Figure 5: E-simulator “PilasBloques”.

Figure 6: E-simulator “Matiﬁc”.

(ﬁgure 9). Such an immediate reaction is important

when organizing the practical activities of young stu-

dents with electronic simulators, because students ex-

pect approval for successful completion of tasks or

some kind of support in case of errors. The immediate

reaction of the electronic resource will help increase

the student’s conﬁdence in their abilities.

There are some principles of construction inter-

active authors’ e-simulators. With the development

of tools, the availability of information sources a

teacher-to-be is able to create interactive authors’ e-

simulators that take into account the speciﬁcs of train-

ing learners of a particular grade on a particular topic,

their individual characteristics and hardware of ed-

ucational process. Authors’ e-simulators can be di-

rected to practice exactly the skills that cause difﬁcul-

ties for learners.

2.2 The Principles of Construction

Interactive Authors’ E-Simulators

Based on the analysis of existing experience of using

e-simulators in the practice of primary education, we

have identiﬁed the following principles of their con-

struction to ensure successful teaching primary stu-

dents.

The ﬁrst principle to be taken into consideration

at e-simulators design is the following: developed e-

simulators should generate learners’ interest.

The matter is a child who works with an interac-

tive model is unobtrusively involved in educational

and cognitive activity. It is important to emphasize

that a learner is got involved in this activity not by

direct teacher’s instructions, but on his own desire to

resolve the situation occurred on a computer screen.

Plot design of a training material encourages him/her

to educational activities. These actions require reveal-

ing subject knowledge and skills as well as the ability

to apply them to a new environment. The combina-

tion of training and practical purpose that is achiev-

able and understandable for a child gradually trans-

forms into the learning motive. Such a transformation

is promoted by the circumstance that at summarizing

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386

Figure 7: Simulator “Educativ”.

the child’s work with a didactic model, his attention is

focused on the importance of the knowledge and skills

that have helped to achieve a successful outcome (Be-

lousova and Oleﬁrenko, 2013).

In primary school it is crucial to include pure life

realities into the learning content. It provides im-

plementation of the didactic principle of training and

practice connection.

E-simulators must allow to apply a learning task

with all its attributes: for example, travelling cars, a

chocolate bar that is being eaten, a pie which is being

divided etc. A learner can move the car, divide the

chocolate bar, cut the pie in different ways.

E-simulators allow to expand the diversity of

training tasks, suggesting the problem having vari-

ous solutions. So, a learner is assigned not only to

solve the problem correctly, but also to make a ratio-

nal choice of the solution method. The second princi-

ple to be taken into consideration at app design is the

following: e-simulators should be visually presented

to create pleasant emotional background.

Child’s emotions at classroom activity have a sig-

niﬁcant impact on it. Emotions initiation of primary

schoolchildren usually is associated with a particular

situation. It might be nice visual design, familiar ob-

jects or characters, valid comments. All this calls up

a learner’s pleasant feelings.

Development of positive emotions and aesthetic

senses is also promoted by the series of techniques.

They include friendly interface of didactic interactive

models, harmoniously picked up colors, using special

techniques to attract and focus learner’s attention, to

develop his imagination, thinking, and memory. A

positive emotional background of a child’s learning

with interactive models is also guaranteed by the pos-

sibility to cancel his actions at any moment and to

return to the previous step. A learner has an opportu-

nity to feel free doing his trials at searching right or

effective task solving. He is not afraid of any nega-

tive consequences. It promotes creation of a learner’s

positive emotions, forming his persistence and conﬁ-

dence. The third principle to be taken into considera-

tion at e-simulators design is the following: problem

deﬁnition should involve learners into critical analy-

sis of input data as for their adequacy, redundancy,

actuality.

For this purpose, the developed e-simulators have

redundant information, so that a child could choose

what he/she needs. For example, additional measure-

ments, additional data etc. The fourth principle to be

taken into consideration at app design is the follow-

ing: e-simulators should allow learners to operate

free, for example, to perform transformations of ge-

ometric solids (rotate, drag, resize them).

The peculiarity of young learners’ perception is a

close connection with an action. For schoolchildren,

Practical Activity Organization of Primary School Students with using e-Simulators

387

Figure 8: Simulator “Code”.

Figure 9: Tasks for 4 grade students “Learning”.

especially at the age of 6–7 years old, to perceive the

subject means to do something with it, for instance,

to touch, to rotate, and to change. Practical actions

play a signiﬁcant role for the development of child’s

cognitive processes. Therefore, e-simulators should

allow manipulation with learning objects.

E-simulators which are focused on learners’ re-

search activities should provide possibility of the ﬁg-

ures transformations such as rotation of geometric

shapes, overlapping some shapes on others for their

comparing and resizing. Making changes with shapes

meets child’s need to experiment. At the same time

it allows to see results of his activities and to make

his/her own conclusions.

The ﬁfth principle is the principle of reliance on

pedagogical and research tools of personal IT de-

vices means the recognition of the power of mod-

ern personal IT devices and their feasibility of use in

the learning process as effective and affordable tools

of educational and research activities. Note that this

principle is one of the main in the further organiza-

tion of the practical activities of primary students with

e-simulators, because today smartphones and tablets

have become an integral part of modern children’s

lives. The implementation of the principle involves

the use of educational mobile applications, through

which the teacher has the opportunity to organize in-

dependent practical activities outside the school. To

date, a powerful database of e-simulators has been

developed, some of which are available on mobile

applications. Such mobile simulators provide a real

opportunity to organize a multi-level (individual) ap-

proach within the lesson and during the organization

of distance learning, provide instant veriﬁcation of the

correctness of the tasks; provide opportunities to or-

ganize the practical activities of each student on their

own trajectory, depending on his skills, knowledge,

the need to deepen knowledge. For example, the ap-

plications “Lightbot: Code Hour” (from SpriteBox

LLC), Programming for children (from IDZ Digital)

are focused on supporting the topic “Performers of

algorithms and their command systems” (ﬁgures 10,

11).

It should be noted that the practice of students’

knowledge gained in class is a normal process. At the

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388

Figure 10: The complex of educational IT devices’ games

“Programming for children”.

Figure 11: The complex of educational IT devices’ games

“Lightbot: Code Hour”.

same time, the organization of practice, consolidation

of knowledge sometimes loses its didactic value due

to the formality of this type of work, the uniformity of

educational exercises. That is why the advantage of

using in educational practice such educational appli-

cations as “Lightbot: Code Hour”, “Programming for

children” gives students the opportunity to practice

learning methods in a variety of game learning tasks;

attractive, expressive form of presentation of the ma-

terial; availability of various forms of encouragement

and provision of timely assistance to educational in-

stitutions, which provides an activity approach of stu-

dents to the acquisition and consolidation of knowl-

edge.

Some additional principles to be taken into con-

sideration at interactive models design are: devel-

oped e-simulators should provide support (step by

step assistance) of learners’ activity to achieve suc-

cess and completeness at tasks performing; developed

e-simulators should provide an opportunity to verify

the correctness of the obtained result.

On the one hand, to succeed in learning it is im-

portant for a child to have an opportunity to achieve

his intended result. Timely assistance is crucial for

learners who have just started learning. Developed

e-simulators contain elements that provide necessary

support for a learner. Every child who works with

the model can get help in time. A child can get help

after his request in the form of textual commentary,

additional constructions, and solution. The system

of multi-level assistance in E-simulators focuses on

achievement the result by each child.

On the other hand, training should be accompa-

nied by overcoming difﬁculties feasible for a learner.

Depriving a learner of difﬁculties we, however, deny

him feeling joy and pleasure of success gained

through his/her own efforts. Difﬁculties in the learn-

ing process are essential to meet learner’s needs in

cognitive activity. Therefore, learner’s assistance at

difﬁculties should be dosed, not excessive, but suf-

ﬁcient to support his efforts and aimed at making

him/her overcome obstacles himself/herself. Learners

in their learning activities should not act on a pattern

and algorithm and retain the right to initiative, possi-

ble errors and their correction. A learner should be re-

laxed in his own actions. The experience in this activ-

ity is now appreciated higher than well learned rules

in solving typical tasks as this experience teaches a

learner how to acquire knowledge.

Taking dosage help for learners in e-simulators is

a complex task and is currently being implemented

fairly rarely, but this assistance will help develop-

ing initiatives to identify creative abilities, creat-

ing strong-willed child. Successful and progress-

ing schoolchildren can employ maximum available to

overcome difﬁculty level tasks for schoolchildren.

2.3 Interactive Tools for Construction

Authors’ e-Simulators by Primary

Teachers-to-Be

We would like to show the basic tools for construction

interactive authors’ e-simulators. A teacher-to-be,

creating e-simulators, independently, can use modern

tool kits to create interactive exercises and didactic

computer games. The interface of many tool kits, ori-

ented to design author’s didactic resources, is simpli-

ﬁed and intuitive for an average user and it does not

require additional training. In addition, as a rule, these

tools include a set of templates for rapid development

and offer the available examples.

To develop e-simulators a teacher-to-be can use

programs that are part of an integrated Microsoft Of-

ﬁce package, spreadsheets and applications to create

presentations.

The choice of these applications is due to several

reasons:

Practical Activity Organization of Primary School Students with using e-Simulators

389

• wide spread of Microsoft Ofﬁce package among

different specialists;

• preparedness of teachers-to-be to use ofﬁce tech-

nology in teaching;

• presence of large collections of teaching resources

developed by teachers for their own educational

activities. Ready didactic resources are available

to teachers and can be adapted to the conditions

of a particular grade and lesson;

• teachers’ experience of usage software package

for the preparation of teaching and learning ma-

terials, documents, etc.;

• possibilities to integrate various forms of informa-

tion in e-simulators, so, slide or book may contain

author’s drawings prepared in appropriate graph-

ics software, sounds, prepared in music editors,

text fragments.

There are the examples of authors’ e-simulators.

Electronic simulators developed by our students from

H. S. Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical Uni-

versity, teachers-to-be for young learners for primary

school to teach Maths in Microsoft Excel spreadsheet

are presented in the form of tests, didactic games,

crossword puzzle (ﬁgures 12-14).

Figure 12: E-simulator for learning fractions developed in

Microsoft Excel.

Basically, such capabilities provide convenience

to create training systems in Microsoft Excel:

• data exchange between applications which facili-

tates the process of preparing the environment for

Figure 13: E-simulators for learning analog clocks.

Figure 14: E-simulators for learning multiplication tables.

e-simulators and enables to provide an attractive

appearance;

• modiﬁcations and additions to the tasks when they

are needed;

• programmable generation of numerical values in

the text of tasks and answers. This allows pre-

venting memorizing the answers by learners and

provides variation of the tasks.

• simpliﬁcation of the analysis of the assignment

correctness by the relevant functions;

• presentation of the test results in the form of ta-

bles, charts, graphics, etc.;

• storage of test results and the ability to further

analysis;

• availability of templates to create tests that are

available to teachers-to-be at any time.

The advantage of using presentation software to

develop automated tests is the possibility of their at-

tractive design, providing a soundtrack, the ability to

support each task or question with a desired scheme

or pattern. In addition, the PowerPoint environment

allows the construction of matching tasks, where the

correspondence between the elements of two sets is

deﬁned, the tasks of ordering the sequence of actions.

Of special convenience for a teacher-to-be is the

access to ready-made templates that have a pro-

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390

Figure 15: The complex of educational games “Rebus1”.

grammed tasks check. In the environment of Mi-

crosoft PowerPoint presentation the electronic simu-

lators developed by our students are presented (ﬁgures

14, 15). The e-simulators include controls designed

for automatic creation of tasks for learners and ele-

ments that analyze user actions.

However, the development of electronic simula-

tors in these packages requires knowledge of the

programming language Visual Basic for Applica-

tion and it is a painstaking task for a teacher-to-be.

To create e-simulators primary school teachers-to-

be can use designing environments which include a

substantial set of templates and patterns associated

with school material. In particular, such app de-

signers can be useful for a teacher-to-be. They are

the designers: Classtools.net, Rebus1.com, Zondle,

Learningapps.org, Studystack, and others.

Within the environment “Classtools.net” (http://

classtools.net/) a teacher-to-be can develop interac-

tive posters, charts, diagrams, computer educational

games to support any school subject such as Maths,

Science, Reading and more. The environment is an

online resource that offers a set of templates for cre-

ating teaching tools. In particular, enables to create

computer games such as quizzes in the form of arcade

games (search for pairs of questions and answers, hit-

ting the target with the answer), creates tasks related

to the grouping of elements, allows to create interac-

tive posters in which an explaining text is shown when

you hover your mouse on a speciﬁc part of the image.

Of special convenience for teachers-to-be is that de-

veloped e-simulators can be stored on the server for

the organization of joint work of learners, on the local

computer for future use in the classroom, or printed

out.

An interesting experience is the work of young

students with puzzles. For example, the Ukrainian-

language puzzle generator “Rebus1.com” (http://

rebus1.com/ua/) allows the teacher to generate any

puzzle on a speciﬁc request (word, phrase). Within

the environment, you can create special puzzles for

the ﬁrst-second grade students, using fairy-tale, and

cartoon characters (ﬁgure 15).

Despite the fact that puzzle tasks contain images

that are easy for students to understand, their inter-

pretation requires a number of mental actions: to de-

termine the main / secondary information, to explain

the meaning of the word (text fragment), to estab-

lish cause-and-effect relationships, to establish an al-

gorithm, provide a description of the object, explain

the purpose of the object (process), draw conclusions,

etc. The advantage of using computer puzzles is that

independence in such work is achieved due to the in-

stantaneous reaction of the software to the actions of

the student, because if students have some difﬁculties,

the program provides additional guidance. The cor-

rect solution of tasks is accompanied by various forms

of encouragement – appropriate musical accompani-

ment, approving gestures of the main characters of

the program. Promptly and timely individualized as-

sistance and various forms of encouragement stimu-

late to solve problems of higher complexity, cause the

student a positive attitude to independent practical ac-

tivities.

The didactic games designer “Zondle” (http://

www.zondle.com) allows a teacher-to-be to create e-

simulators for any subject. The designer offers tem-

plate games to ﬁll in with the subject content. In this

case, a teacher-to-be needs only to prepare assign-

ments and choose a template of the offered. Designer

offers to use certain types of tasks, among them the

tasks that include:

• select the correct answer from the offered;

• enter the correct answer from the keyboard;

• conﬁrm the correctness of a statement;

• insert missing words into the statement and oth-

ers.

The environment also provides an option to de-

velop the game plot, choose the characters and ﬁll in

substantive tasks by oneself. Creating author’s games

does not require programming and additional train-

ing. The developed educational games are stored in

a network that allows to use them in extra-curricular

activities for learners.

The designer of interactive exercises

“LearningApps.org” (learningapps.org, 2002)

(http://learningapps.org) allows you to create training

exercises that require practical actions from user:

to place in the correct order, to choose the correct

answer, to solve a crossword puzzle, to solve a

puzzles, to group etc. Many templates are offered

to a teacher-to-be as well as a set of ready-made

interactive exercises that can be used as templates

(ﬁgure 16). They help in creation of such didactic

exercises that would be appropriate in a particular

Practical Activity Organization of Primary School Students with using e-Simulators

391

Figure 16: Examples of interactive exercises “Algorithms with cycles”.

Figure 17: Examples of interactive exercises created in the

LearningApps environment.

grade, in the study of a particular topic. Ready

projects can be stored on a local storage or network.

In ﬁgure 17 some examples of interactive exercises

developed by our students are shown.

The designer of education games “Studystack”

(http://www.studystack.com/) allows not only to cre-

ate interactive exercises using the set of templates,

but also offers practical tasks already available from

a variety of subjects: Mathematics, ICT, Nature, Art,

History, etc. Projects are stored on the server, which

allows to use them both at the school and as home

training. The designer has been working since 2001

and has accumulated a signiﬁcant amount of ready in-

teractive exercises for children from preschool to high

school. The advantage of using this designer is ease

of preparation of training exercises: a teacher-to-be

simply enters tasks text and correct answers, on which

base different versions of interactive exercises are cre-

ated automatically such as quizzes, crosswords, hit on

target games and hangman games, etc.

To create e-simulators a teacher-to-be can also use

an environment “GeoGebra” (http://www.geogebra.

org). It is very popular nowadays (Drushlyak et al.,

2020; Kramarenko et al., 2020). Some examples of e-

simulators developed by our students for young learn-

ers on GeoGebra are shown in ﬁgures 18, 19.

All e-simulators were developed by teachers-to-

be for primary school during their studies at H.

S. Skovoroda Kharkiv National Pedagogical Univer-

sity. E-simulators in ﬁgures are original and tested

by the students during teaching practice. They are

always available for primary school teachers. We

think that the experience for the development of these

e-simulators will be useful for teachers-to-be, and

teachers in their professional activities.

3 DISCUSSION

The main results of effectiveness of e-simulators are

conﬁrmed by many scholars, namely:

AET 2020 - Symposium on Advances in Educational Technology

392

Figure 18: E-simulator for task about chess: Six children want to play chess, so that everyone plays with each player once.

Find how many parties will be played?

Figure 19: E-simulators for tasks about angles. Children collect right, obtuse and acute angles into baskets.

Practical Activity Organization of Primary School Students with using e-Simulators

393

• instead of being knowledge-focused, e-simulators

are built around the skills (Alayyar et al., 2012)

necessary to carry out speciﬁed tasks in primary

school; the focus is on what young learners can

do at lessons rather than on what they know;

• young learners are expected to demonstrate

practice-added skills which are assessed by look-

ing at outcomes of e-simulators rather than pro-

cess (www.curriculumonline.ie, 2001);

• young learners’ performance is evaluated dur-

ing the instructional process against com-

mon learning standards (Alayyar et al., 2012;

www.curriculumonline.ie, 2001), and all forms

of assessment are standards-based and criterion-

referenced (Hughes and Daniels, 2013). After all,

teachers-to-be will be able to deliberately choose

the most effective direction in learning young

learners with e-simulators.

4 CONCLUSIONS

Use of e-simulators is an effective way of develop-

ing successful general study skills for young learners.

E-simulators feature the ability to provide real vari-

ability of tasks, uniqueness of exercises, operative as-

sessment of correctness in each task, adjustment of

task difﬁculty, ability to provide a shade of competi-

tiveness and game to the exercises. E-simulators can

be created by the universal software tools, such pro-

grams that are part of an integrated Microsoft Ofﬁce

package or special designing environments.

The capabilities of the e-simulators are covered,

which ensure successful acquisition of knowledge, for

developing young schoolchildren’s skills. Considered

tool kits enable a teacher-to-be to design indepen-

dently author’s e-simulators that meet the needs of

a particular lesson, enable to achieve the lesson goal

with the peculiarities of the educational process at pri-

mary school.

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