The von Neumann Computer Game E-Book

Richard Vahrenkamp

• Herausgeber: via tolino media
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

The educational game "von Neumann Computer Game" can be used in schools to teach pupils the basic principles of how a computer works, based on the von Neumann architecture, in a playful and step-by-step manner. The game can also be used in the museum education of computer museums and technology museums as well as in adult education. The goal of the "von Neumann Computer Game" is to playfully recreate the information logistics in the computer, how, under the supervision of the control unit, data is transferred from the memory to the computing unit, processed there, and stored back. The processes are controlled by the control unit with a program. The processes in the control unit and in the arithmetic unit are played by one pupil each. Each piece of information is represented as a number by a pupil with a sign. The seats in the class become storage locations of numerical data. In the class, the pupils carry the information back and forth on signs. The "von Neumann Computer Game" can be used in didactics for the subjects computer science, mathematics and media literacy. The game can be used in schools, where it can be played in the classroom, and in exhibition rooms of museums, where it can be guided by museum education. It can be played from grade 3 and up and covers only elementary arithmetic operations of plus, minus, times and division. Depending on the grade level, the game can be played at different levels of difficulty. In grade 10, for example, the values of a polynomial of degree 3 can be calculated step by step. The "von Neumann Computer Game" can be used not only in schools but also in adult education to acquire media competence or in retraining programs to teach learners the basic principles of how a computer works. The "von Neumann Computer Game" can be taught at universities and colleges of education for teacher training in courses on didactics for the subjects of computer science, mathematics and media competence. In terms of media theory, the game is of interest because it opens a rift to the immeasurable space of human creativity in the field of software development and software application, which can take place on hardware that at first seems a bit brittle.

Leseprobe

Richard Vahrenkamp

The von Neumann Computer Game

An Educational Game for Digital Education in School

The cover foto is free from pixabay.com.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Literature

Impressum

Introduction

The educational game "von Neumann Computer Game" can be used in schools to teach pupils the basic principles of the functioning of a computer based on the von Neumann architecture in a playful and step-by-step manner. The game can also be used in museum education of computer museums (Aspray et al. 2010) and technology museums as well as in adult education (Foti 2020). The goal of the "von Neumann Computer Game" is to playfully re-enact the information logistics in the computer, how, under the supervision of the control unit, data is transferred from the memory to the arithmetic unit, processed there, and stored back. The following figure 1 visualizes this relationship. The processes are controlled by the control unit with a program. The processes in the control unit and in the arithmetic unit are played by one pupil each. Each piece of information is represented by a pupil with a sign with a number. The seats in the class become storage locations of numerical data. In the class, the pupils carry the information back and forth on signs. The "von Neumann Computer Game" contributes to digital literacy (Mihailidis 2014, Piccoli 2017) and provides a great learning effect about the basics of computers, which are used billions of times in today's society with smartphones.

Figure 1.

The "von Neumann Computer Game" can be used in didactics for the subjects computer science (Piccoli 2017), mathematics (Danton 2022. Magrenan 2020) and media literacy (Mihailidis 2014). The game can be used in schools, where it can be played in the classroom, and in exhibition rooms of museums, where it can be guided by museum education. It can be played in Middle School und Junior High Schools and covers only elementary arithmetic operations of plus, minus, times and division. Depending on the grade level, the game can be played at different levels of difficulty. For example, for juniors, the values of a polynomial of degree 3 can be calculated step-by-step. The different levels of play are presented in detail below. At the higher difficulty levels, elementary assembly language commands for the information logistics of the calculator are presented, and the creation of a formal program can be acted out by the pupils. The pupils can experience how the software operates on the hardware of the control unit, arithmetic unit and data memory. The language Assembler is therefore chosen for the learning game, because it shows with its elementary commands how the information logistics operates with the commands load and save on the hardware of the memory locations (Van Hoy 2019).

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