Dynamics: Where the digital really moves. A proposal to improve the engagement of primary school children with sport using their ICT skills as a tool

Children are having a sedentary lifestyle in front of a screen and this is generating problems in their health, their behaviour and their academic performance. The challenge that arises from this situation is How to improve the engagement of primary school children (8-12 years) with sport using their digital (ICT) skills as a tool? Nowadays children do not learn the basic motor skills properly and when they face sporty situations they cannot perform with competence and confidence. This fact makes them feel sport is not fun and as a result they avoid active activities and prefer sedentary ones. Additionally children usually need an adult –parents, teachers or coaches- to encourage them to be active, but if the adults are not skilled and well prepared to motivate them properly, the active experience is not good enough to build physical literacy on them. On the other hand, for doing activities in front of a screen -such as playing games- children explore, discover and learn alone. They spend hours doing the same activity because the fun is the main motivation for learning and mastering skills. This fact defined the concept of Dynamics: What if the motivation to practice physical activity is driven by the same exploration and discovery process the children are having with video-games? After researching what videogames are teaching to players a very important trend was found. Minecraft which is considered a videogame is actually a digital toy that offers a non-dictated play experience and helps children to have a transmedia learning through play. This means that the players have to explore, learn and master ways of playing not only using the game but other resources such as you tube tutorial videos, blogs, wikis and the Minecraft community among others. The proper use of these resources and the application and sharing of the information available makes possible to the players to play better and achieve their goals in the game while developing their digital literacy. If children are able to use different resources in different digital contexts to learn digital literacy while having fun why not include some physical resources to the game experience to make them learn physical literacy at the same time and become confident to perform any sporty activity? Under this principle Dynamics was developed. Dynamics is a game that uses Minecraft™ as a platform to encourage children to be active and develop their physical and digital literacy while exploring, building and using dynamic artefacts. To be able to play, children should collect dynamic blocks by doing physical exercises related to the basic motor skills in blocky spaces generated by them having a real space as a base. The Dynamic Blocks are available to the players according to their age, weight, height and bone-muscle-fat proportion. (This data that is stored and tracked by a multi-movement sensor) When the kid improves the fitness level and the mastery level, the advanced blocks are unlocked. In this way the game personalises the experience for each player. Using a see-through holographic headset Dynamics can be played in any indoor or outdoor place and prepares children to face sporty activities with competence and confidence while having fun being part of their Minecraft creations. Dynamics also allows parents, teachers and coaches teach motor skills to children and track their progress