Development of DAYSAM: An Educational Smart Phone Game for Preschoolers to Increase Awareness of Renewable Energy

This paper presents a smartphone application game that aims to increase the awareness of preschoolers on renewable energy. The age of the selected preschoolers is in the range of 4-6 years. The game is called DAYSAM, and it aims to increase awareness regarding photovoltaic arrays, wind turbines, mini-hydropower stations, energy efficiency, and risks that polar bears are facing. The game provides two superior features compared to other available games in Arabic language, targeting the same age group. Preschoolers from An-Najah Child Institute are selected to play this game to investigate the impact of this game. The preschoolers’ awareness is tested before and after playing the game using coloring sheets in an unsupervised coloring process. The results show that the proposed game has increased preschooler’s awareness of renewable energy. Before playing the game, none of the preschoolers recognized images like the photovoltaic array or the wind turbine. After playing the game the preschoolers recognized these devices in different situations and shapes. This indicates that such a game can be used as a fun and educational tool in nurseries that have Arabic communication medium to increase awareness of renewable energy. View Full-Text