Abstract
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.
Highlights
The failure of renewable energy implementation is often connected to low public awareness, policy failures, and market characterization
For the pre-testing, the preschoolers were asked to color the coloring sheet shown in Figure 1 three times for two weeks
All preschoolers have recognized the photovoltaic array as a different part from the roof and color blue as it should be, in the game, the utilized PV array is ground-mounted not a roof top element
Summary
The failure of renewable energy implementation is often connected to low public awareness, policy failures, and market characterization. The public may induce behavioral barriers for renewable energy dissemination [1]. These behavioral barriers can be defined as negative decisions of the end-user regarding renewable energy. According to [2], Palestinian youth show limited awareness of renewable energy for many reasons, including insufficient inclusion of renewable energy information in school and academic curricula. Many learning methods can drive children’s attention toward a specific aspect and, increase awareness. Among these methods are computer games and smartphone applications [3,4]
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