Aprendiendo ciencias de la computación mediante un juego

During the past three weeks, many 10th Year students were presented with a cryptography challenge game based on Khan Academy resources. The challenge is to solve a mysterious problem, introduced as a spy story, where the students play in first person. The story begins with an introduction to a historical moment and to the character's descriptions. Once the context and objectives of the game are defined, participants can access a list of clues. Each clue is presented as a cryptographic problem, this is where students must learn and apply CS concepts.

Learning Crypto (Khan Academy Edu Resource)

Each of the mysterious clues consists of a collection of images and stories in which the information is encrypted. Along with the mysterious clues, Khan Academy offers educational resources based on the knowledge necessary to solve the problem. Participants use these educational resources in creative ways and look for the answers contained in the encrypted messages. Each correct answer opens up new possibilities for the next mysterious clues.

Students are definitely having fun while learning, engagement rocketed.

The student's mission does not end with the solution to the mystery game. Their work continues with the use of the problem-solving cycle and its corresponding problem-solving skills set. As there are several different versions, in this case, the selected cycle was: "Solution Fluency Guide" which author is the Global Digital Citizen Foundation. Students complete each stage of the cycle and write a report on their blogs. Every step of the way is recorded along with their reflections.

Student's work specimen

Student's work specimen

The content of the reports is strongly influenced by the concepts of the problem-solving cycle. We emphasize the correct use of these skills from a conceptual point of view. But we also consider as very important the design and format in which reports are presented.This is the reason why students also receive basic instruction in how to integrate text paragraphs, images, and soundtracks into one single report. We focus on content consistency, meaning that each element must provide useful and appropriate information considering the format used.

Multimedia objects, like audio tracks or videos, are inserted using HTML Iframes. 

Students work on the layout and format of their reports.

Audio tracks are recorded in class. Students record their voices separately, for a while they work on the interview questions, then they work on the answers. Once they have recorded the audio tracks, they must create a project in Audacity, insert all the audio components and export the project to an MP3. The exported file is published in Soundcloud, they do this to obtain an HTML Iframe, and thus to be able to insert the track in the article.

Audio tracks are created and added to Audacity

Finally, a brief list of the competencies that students develop:

• Skills for creative problem-solving.
• Composition of a text document with multimedia components.
• Audio editing.
• Publication of content online and in streaming services.
• They acquire knowledge on core subjects in computer science.
• Teamwork and collaborative work.