Digital Pedagogy and Online Games through the Perspective of Early Childhood Educators: The Case of FRIV

Abstract

Aims: This study was intended to systematically examine the collection of a popular online gaming platform for children, called FRIV games, in the context of digital pedagogy and through the perspective of future pedagogues for preschool children. A systematic study of the platform has been highlighted, by exploiting the perspective of future pedagogues of pre-school children. Parallelly, the intentions of future pedagogues, regarding the use of games in the learning process, are detected. This is a descriptive survey research. Methodology: The study was developed through the approach of 137 future preschool educators (senior students), who evaluated the collection of games through a rubric-type preformed observation grid. The study used a researcher-made questionnaire to gather the relevant information, while quantitative data was obtained which was combined also with qualitative ones. Results: The results describe the content of the popular suite in a methodical way that could be used by pedagogues of pre-school children. Also the research results highlighted the positive aspects that these games could provide in the early childhood education and in the same time, the perspective of future educators revealed the potential prospects that such games could have in pre-school education. Conclusion: Future educators seem to approach the games of this collection with a positive attitude while they are able to highlight the positive features of games that could contribute to the learning process. They appear to have positive intentions in using them in the educational process, so as to exploit relevant representations that children bring to early childhood education settings.