USING GAMIFICATION METHODS IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY EDUCATION

Information technology (IT) is one of the most important learning disciplines in Bulgarian's school in terms of development pupils' digital competences need for their future life. Students often lose interest in learning IT because they do not see connection of the knowledge and skill acquired to their everyday tasks. One of the potential ways to handle the problem is to use games and gaming situations in class. That would motivate the students to learn and to do experiments. Nowadays special software for that purpose has been developed. For example, we could use Minecraft: Education Edition that allows us to create a fun story line in virtual classes. Having a story line and interesting place for students will collide them with problems from the world of the "adults". That will help pupils to understand that everything they learn in IT classes is necessity in their life as adults. Idea of using games was adapted so it could be in line with the national curriculum in Bulgaria. For that purpose, the author made a set of four lesson that contain lessons plans, in-game resources and game-based problems with relevant resources. All of that is develop so it could cover the expected results and competencies of the students required in the national curriculum for information technology in Bulgaria for section "Processing of table data" in 6th grade, and also motivate the pupils to understand necessity of learning IT in school.