Kids In Control

INCONTROL is already active in the educational sector for a long time. Universities and Colleges use the Educational Suite to educate students in simulation. But can ED also be used by children in the age of 10-14 years old?

To determine if simulation can be used by children in the age of 10-14 years old INCONTROL has started a pilot project with two children. The children, Job and Marlotte, were asked to build a chocolate factory in ED. Goal of this project was to investigate if ED could be the right tool to stimulate the exact reasoning of children in the age of 10-14 years old. While exact subjects are not very popular at schools, exact subjects can stimulate the logic reasoning of children and at the same time it can help to create solutions for a wide range of questions. Simulation can be a stimulating educational tool for children to develop their exact thinking methods and a pleasant way to get to know logistical processes.

Job and Marlotte are both 12 years old and had no experience with ED until this project. They were asked to collect information about the processes in the chocolate factory before starting to work with ED. After a short introduction into ED and building a simple model, Job and Marlotte started building their own factories. With their experience in gaming and other computer programs the children got to know ED very quickly. During the process of building the model the children were discussing the processes in the factory. But they also encountered some mathematical problems while building the model.

At the end of two sessions of two hours they were both expected to have a working chocolate factory. In the factories all of the subsequent processes should be implemented; drying, burning and fermenting of the chocolate beans, mixing the ingredients, etc. Both Job and Marlotte had a working chocolate factory in ED after the two sessions. After finishing the building of the factory itself Marlotte started to work on enhancing the appearance of her model and Job started on improving the performance of his model.

Both children enjoyed working with ED. They were using ED without any child-friendly interface and had no problem working with the program for 2 hours. It was astonishing to see how they brought their knowledge into practice and did mathematics while working on their model. INCONTROL will continue to see if ED can be implemented on schools to stimulate children in their exact reasoning.