The use of digital educational games in the youth and adult education

Abstract

Digital educational games have been important tools for the learning of different contents, however, in the Youth and Adult Education (EJA), a modality lacking didactic material, these resources have not been widely used, as educational games created for this audience are scarce. It is believed that this lack of usage is due to the fact that these resources are thought to be more attractive to children. Considering the above, for this article, a digital educational game was created in order to explore its potential in EJA and to investigate if it contributes to learning through literacy practices. As a theoretical contribution, this article is based mainly on: Prensky (2001), Savi and Ulbricht (2008) and Pinheiro, Lima e Araújo (2020) on the benefits of educational digital games for learning; Freire (2018; 1987), on the individual's awareness and contextualized learning; Soares (2004), Kleiman (2007), Catelli Jr. (2014) and Pinheiro (2018) on literacies. Therefore, after the development of the digital game Xote da Preservação, which addresses environmental issues, it was applied in a class of young adults and adults and, through the observation of this practice and interviews, their considerations regarding the proposed activity were analyzed. As a result, it was found that the object of this research showed great potential for literacy and students’ awareness and, although this study identifies that the practices aided by technologies are not recurrent with the participating public, the game stimulated the interest of all those involved, who were glad to play it.