Video Games for Literacy Interventions with Children in Poverty Contexts

DIUK, B.

Workshop; Global Literacy and Accesibility Challenge Workshop; 2019

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In Latin America, a large percentage of low-income students are often unable to read until advanced primary grades (Abadzi, 2008). In Buenos Aires, Argentina, it has been estimated that 20% of 4th to 6th grade children growing up in poverty contexts are illiterate despite attending school (Harriague, personal communication). Most of these children do not have learning disabilities but are basically instructional victims.In 2012 we developed a reading program, DALE!, which improved reading levels but is time-consuming. Consequently, in partnership with Globant, we designed a videogame which allowed us to obtain an improvement in Reading and Spelling in a sample of 150 3rd to 7th grade students that was indistinguishable from the pen-and-paper implementation. We are currently testing the videogame in 1st grade children and developing analytics in order to record complete interventions and assess the learning process. In this talk we will show data from both studies.However, piloting the videogame in schools has shown that educational institutions attended by children growing up in poverty contexts in Argentina lack the equipment for carrying out digital proposals: they have few working PCs and no internet connection. Consequently, in terms of future lines of research, we are designing a new project that aims to adapt the videogame for mobile devices so that children in poverty contexts can play in their parent´s cell phones at home. Placing the videogame in the homes would allow for a remedial strategy for the older children in the households but also for promoting early literacy in younger siblings, thus reducing the school-entry knowledge gap between these children and more affluent peers. Besides adapting the videogame, the project involves designing strategies for making the videogame accessible in homes with no internet connectivity.