Designing an Educational Aid Tool to Learning Waste Separation for 5-7 Years Old Children

Due to a progressive deterioration of our planet and its resources, environmental education has become crucial and children should be trained to understand environmental issues at an early age so they can cultivate positive change in the future. This study combines research in child development & educational strategies with environmentally related issues into a game that promotes active learning. Data for the study is gathered in a qualitative manner, introducing child participants to existing environmental games and collecting their feedback into graphic organizers. For this study 15 children (5-7) years old were selected for participated in design process. Most methods which were selected for surveying were based on children psychology, and characteristic. At the end a prototype of an environmental education game that combines various styles of play will then be designed based on the gathered data. The game aims to explore concepts, scenarios, and strategies of environmental preservation, encouraging children to become active participants in preserving the planet and promoting environmentally responsible behavior.


Introduction
The twenty first century brought new challenges to teachers. They have to compete harder for students' attention against many factors, such as personal interests, video games, surfing the Web, social media, cell phones apps, text-messaging, and so forth. Students have always faced distractions and time-wasters, but the tablets and cell phones, and the constant stream of stimuli they offer pose a profound new challenge to focusing and learning. (1) Children learn through play, explore, communicate through social interaction and duplication of each other, they also learn new skills and cooperation with others. However, it has been observed that school computers are used mainly for personal training. Also, most educational media for children's social aspects of learning and culture do not report such content. New media offers limited opportunities for creative interaction.
(2) Today's research area is more focus on the effort to create products that can entertain children like TV. In order to successfully engage children in play, we need to understand the kind of interaction we have made tangible for children of all ages. (3) For example, children aged 12-18 months has begun to experiment with objects and is able to make marks on paper simply, while a 4-year-old children is fully able to identify different types of objects and words and significantly more physically active.
Although every child, know how to use simple tools. In this way, we are able to predict the specific interactions in the game that will be according to the average functionality of all ages.
(2) Furthermore, the way information is presented to children, influences both their initial understanding of the material and its future retention. Traditional teaching methods involving "mechanically follow[ing] a set of steps or read[ing] and hear[ing] about things learned and done by others" are not as effective a learning tool, as active or inquiry-based systems of education (Elementary Science, 1996, p.A2). Furthermore, the process of playing an educational game supports the understanding of new ideas and theories, in addition to conventional classroom-based methods of instruction. Information acquisition and anticipated retention can be significantly improved if the learning approach is dynamic and enjoyable. (5) most basic steps will be explain or describe by the parent or coach that is the scientific process.
The best way for conveying information to children of different levels, is: determining the general features, link and description through word displaying.

Active learning
Active learning is based on the belief that ALL children can learn. The guiding principle behind this theory is that our job as parents and educators is to create environments or situations that encourage active exploration, without interference from an adult. This means that we are not guiding the child's hands or telling the child what to do. Instead we encourage the child to be an active participant in his or her own learning by creating spaces and presenting materials that are interesting and safe to explore. In order to be most effective, the environment should be responsive, in other words something should happen when a child moves or bangs something. (4444) Ludic activity is proven to encourage and enhance information retention (Heinich, Molenda, Russel, & Smaldino, 1996), as it provides the player with an opportunity to forget about the act of learning and focus on the act of playing (Peisach, Hardeman, 1985). On a psychological level, information is better perceived and six years, we limit our children. In the following, some view of the children's characteristics between four and six years old, is described:

Hanna, Risden & Alexander
In its guidelines for usability testing with children Hanna, Risden, and Alexander (1997) provide three age groups: 2 to 5 years, 6 to 10 years and 11 to 14 years. Children between four and eight years are the youngest average group. Some more detailed characteristics of this age group, according to Hanna, Risden, and Alexander (1997) are: • 2 to 5 years: focus on preschoolers are somewhat low. In addition, their motivation to please the adults and their ability to adapt to an unfamiliar environment and new people may change from one moment to the next.
They are unpredictable. Therefore, this age group are more extensive compatibility testing user.
• 6 to 10 years: Children in this age group attend school. So they can do things successfully and follow directions from adults. They respond to questions And trying to experience new things, and they are very concerned about the observed fact of the computer game. Smallest children in this age group (6 and 7) may be a bit shy. (6) For this project following methods were done through the design process to knowing user better.

Observation
Viewing everything, not only the people or the products but also places and rules.

Interview with Children
In order to achieve the children's attitude to the environment and knowing their thinking and understanding of the environment. The interview was used. About 30 children 4-6 years old answered these questions: What is the environment? How do you keep your environment? How can you protect your environment?
Then we asked children to draw painting about environment protection.

Findings indicate that:
-Children environment is limited to the environment in which they live.
-In order to environment protection more children point out: the separation of waste, using public transportation instead of individual vehicles, plant trees and so forth.

Thinking Out Loud
We want children to draw picture about environmental protection. Then children were asked to explain about each of their painting. This method is widely used in the industry. In this case tested users will be asked to talk about what they think out loud. Findings indicate that: -The environment can be kept clean by waste separation.
-don't Throwing out your mouth water when you're walking.
-Making place for birds After that the idea which gained high scores by teacher and families. We made 3D model from them for being evaluated by children.

Mood Board by Users
Mood Board is a set of visual images (e.g. photos, samples of materials) that are collected.
This enables designers to communicate and express themselves beyond the limits of the language. Designers can use this tool to communicate subtle and abstract feelings such as happiness, sadness, and comfortable. Pictures can be found in magazines and online resources. In a recent study mood board was carry out by children between 4-6 age, user sample were (N=15), during the 3 hour participatory workshop. In the first step: the child was asked to play (A).
In the second step: Then child was given a questionnaire that was designed by Smileymeter and he was asked to answer the following questions: How much was the game interesting? This approach has been adopted as an alternative to the traditional open-ended and closed question formats although some researchers suggest that VAS can only be used with children aged around seven and over .Studies in Child Computer Interaction have shown them to be useful for younger children, but have also noted that when these scales are used to elicit opinions about software or hardware products, younger children are inclined to almost always indicate the highest score on the scale. For game (A) the two-tailed P value equals 0.0444 By conventional criteria, this difference is considered to be statistically significant.
In The third step: the child was asked to play (B).
In the fourth stage the child was given a questionnaire designed by Smileymeter and he was asked to rate the attractiveness of its rating.
In the fifth part, the children were asked to choose one of the two games according to their choice. And to answer questions related to this section: -game (A) vs. game (B) is easier to place the waste in a its place -game (B) vs. game (A) is more educational and intellectual.
In the sixth stage after the children have answered questions. Children are referred to without the prior award was presented at the chocolate and so on. Encourage the child to continue playing.

Seventh
Step: At this point, it was suggested that the child is free to select one of the two games that was more educational for him.
With regard to the collection and presentation of children's evaluation, game (A) was elected as the game. So we build its 3D model too.