AWARD YEAR
2019
CATEGORY
Play & Learning
GOALS
Quality Education
KEYWORDS
children, Co-creation, Equitable ed-tech
COUNTRY
Netherlands
DESIGNED BY
War Child Holland leads in designing Can't Wait to Learn games, with specialist support from Butterfly Works to ensure that children and their communities’ “lived realities” and expectations are cornerstones of program design, and &ranj, a serious gaming company on software development.
WEBSITE
https://www.warchildholland.org/projects/cant-wait-to-learn/
Can't Wait to Learn
Award winning digital game-based learning, designed by and for children affected by conflict.
Can’t Wait to Learn is a self-paced serious gaming format accessed on tablets that takes children through Government-approved curriculum. In this way, Can’t Wait to Learn reinforces the education pipeline across informal and formal education, to decrease drop-out rates and encourage transition into formal primary and secondary education.
The secret ingredient? Knowing that effective digital game-based learning is rooted in accurate cultural themes which mimic reality as closely as possible, the unique co-creation process with targeted children culminates in the development of locally contextualised game content, including the design, storyline and curriculum. Can’t Wait to Learn offers a local interface that reflects children’s reality in both the look and feel of the characters and game design and in the game’s storyline, which lowers the threshold for them to engage, particularly if new to technology. Seeing children’s designs brought to life in this way is truly magical.