R&E Educational Program for the Gifted Middle School Students in Informatics using Computer Game Development (R&E Educational Program for the Gifted Middle School Students in Informatics using Computer Game Development)

The 4th Gifted Education Promotion Plan, in 2018, established the role of the Gifted Education Center as a Research & Education (R&E) course for talent development in special fields. To be successful in gifted education, gifted education centers must be able to provide appropriate levels of R&E education programs. In this paper, we propose an R&E education program that develops computer games to improve the creative thinking and problem solving ability of informatics gifted students. Computer games are a field that includes various elements such as the technology of outputting graphics on the screen, the animation technology of moving characters and backgrounds, the collision detection technology between characters, the sound output technology, the video output technology, and the user-friendly interface technology. Therefore, by developing computer games, students can learn various game elements and learn algorithms using informatics concepts and data structures. In this paper, we proposed an R&E education program for developing educational games based on Keller's ARCS model using Python and PyGame, and applied it to the R&E class of middle school informatics class students. Through the game development R&E class, students could experience the program development process of real programmers and explore how given problem situations are represented and solved by the program. In addition, while the students have simply enjoyed playing games as consumers of games, this R & E class gives them the opportunity to devise and include their own ways to increase the interest and motivation of users as suppliers of games.

The 4th Gifted Education Promotion Plan, in 2018, established the role of the Gifted Education Center as a Research & Education (R&E) course for talent development in special fields. To be successful in gifted education, gifted education centers must be able to provide appropriate levels of R&E education programs. In this paper, we propose an R&E education program that develops computer games to improve the creative thinking and problem solving ability of informatics gifted students. Computer games are a field that includes various elements such as the technology of outputting graphics on the screen, the animation technology of moving characters and backgrounds, the collision detection technology between characters, the sound output technology, the video output technology, and the user-friendly interface technology. Therefore, by developing computer games, students can learn various game elements and learn algorithms using informatics concepts and data structures. In this paper, we proposed an R&E education program for developing educational games based on Keller's ARCS model using Python and PyGame, and applied it to the R&E class of middle school informatics class students. Through the game development R&E class, students could experience the program development process of real programmers and explore how given problem situations are represented and solved by the program. In addition, while the students have simply enjoyed playing games as consumers of games, this R & E class gives them the opportunity to devise and include their own ways to increase the interest and motivation of users as suppliers of games.