"What is it?": A culture sensitive educational game

Abstract

When teachers want to introduce a discussion about the use of cigarette to a group of teenagers, it can be interesting to know what this group thinks about it in order to contextualize the approach to their profile. It is proposed here a framework to instance web game supported by common sense knowledge to approach the called "transversal themes" of the school curriculum, like healthcare, sexual education and ethic. The quiz game framework called "What is it?" is presented as a support for teachers in contextualizing the content to the students' local culture, promoting a more effective and significant learning, where a new knowledge is related to a previous one in the student's cognitive structure. Teachers can set up a web quiz game based on common sense knowledge in the prototype presented. © 2008 International Federation for Information Processing.