VREG: A Virtual Reality Educational Game with Arabic Content Using Android Smart Phone

Abstract

In the last few decades, technology found its way from being a wild sci-fi dream, only seen in movies, to being an important element of all aspects of life. The technological industry bloomed quite rapidly where the technological solutions have made any process you can think of easier, faster and more efficient. Educational methodologies started off simple, having a teacher using simply his/her words and some writing along with it. With technology entering the field of education, teaching methods were enhanced and the quality of its outcomes was improved. However, sadly in Arab countries that was not the story. In other words, the use of new education technologies is still limited to basic and simple tasks. In fact, to add to the agony, most of the programs used are poorly implemented and rarely applied. Interestingly, as many studies confirm and from the simple observation of kids playing, it is found that most children are very attracted to new technologies and their applications. Those interests not only changed what a normal childhood would look like, but also introduced a multi-billion industry of electronic games. Virtual Reality (VR) games were introduced a few years back starting a gaming revolution, allowing gamers to enter the world of their dreams. Similar to most technologies, VR started to become more affordable with time. Multiple companies have competed to give us amazing VR products such as Samsung Gear. In this manuscript, we present a Virtual Reality Educational Game (VREG), which is an interactive 3D game with Arabic content that targets the students between age 4 and 8 and can be played on a smart phone. VREG includes multiple games that cover the different concepts of Arabic and English languages alongside math, aiming to help the student to learn through playing. In order to make sure that our game reaches wanted education standards, we put it to the test in two private schools; the feedback was very positive from both teachers and students where the majority of users enjoyed their experiments in VR games.