Chapter one

Introduction

• Background of the study

The utilization of games as teaching devices has received considerable attention from educators during the past decade. However, teaching with games is not entirely an educational innovation since man has long recognized the importance of games as learning tools. Yet, until recently their application in the classroom has been extremely limited.

Learning-games help a student to improve his or her critical thinking skills, and acquire a more advanced level of education. Therefore, a higher quality of education results in a more satisfactory personal and academic achievement.  Recently, electronic games have had  a significant impact on children’s lives.  Hence, learning-games must combine more features to cater for more effective learning through technology (Gros, 2007). Learning-games could be the best way to enhance education through rewards and challenges. Some researchers believe that knowledge acquisition for children through learning-games result in higher performance than knowledge acquisition during conventional teaching methods. The application should have a lot of features that shape a child’s intelligence, which can affect the attitudes and behaviour (Yien, et.al. , 2011Lin et.al., 2017). Young children these day use smartphones and tablets to play, they can swap and tab before they can even walk or talk (Maltais, 2015). We can channel these tablets and smartphones to be useful for all the children, especially for primary school students by engaging technology with education, and this is called Educational technology, which means: “The study and ethical practice of facilitating learning and improving performance by creating, using, and managing appropriate technological processes and resources” (Januszewski and Molenda, 2008).

The value of mathematics to any developing country is not debatable and this is why the supremacy of mathematics over every other subject is extolled by the national policy on Education (FRN, 2004), when it stated that mathematics should be made a core subject at the primary and secondary school levels as earlier mentioned. There is hardly any area of human endeavor devoid of mathematics and its application. Among the present day application of mathematics are the building of models to eliminate or bound recessions and inflations, selecting portfolio of stocks, plan industrial capabilities, plan transportation networks, study the nature of competition and the effects of business rivalry, investigate economic growth, population growth and formulate models ( Lassa, 2012). Kekere (2008) noted that mathematics is the foundation of any meaningful scientific endeavor and any nation that needs development in science and technology should have a strong mathematics for its youths.

Educational technology facilitates children in developing their hand-eye coordination, in developing their language skills, and in helping them gain appropriate skills before they go to the school. It also causes them to pay more attention to detail in order to solve an activity (McLeod, 2008).

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