OpenIDEO - How might we increase the availability of affordable learning tools & services for students in the developing world? - Inspiration

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How might we increase the availability of affordable learning tools & services for students in the developing world?

Inspiration 269 inspirations

Concepting 107 concepts

Evaluation 107 final concepts

Evaluation Shortlist 40 final concepts

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Board Game on Big Issues

A board game was proposed to educate children on basic information about food, water, health and sanitation during a recent collaboration between PSFK & UNICEF.

Children play to collectively build a village, with important questions earning them the building blocks to do so. Answering questions about water will help them build a well, answering questions about healthcare will add a hospital, and so on. Whoever answers the most questions correctly will not only contribute to building the village and educating the other children, they will be the one to collect points for the questions, creating an incentive to learn. The game is over when the village is built.

Am loving this tool which seems sturdy, easy to produce, engaging to play, collaborative, incentivising and applies knowledge to real world issues. The best part is that children can discuss answers in a locally relevant way. Source: http://bit.ly/aHT0i4

This is the kind of product that I think could be perfect to match with my earlier post on Collaborating with Social Enterprise: http://bit.ly/9r060m

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Meena Kadri

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August 24, 2010, 04:28AM

Thanks Gabriel – I see from the links on your profile page that this is a specialist area for you – great to have you onboard! I look forward to seeing you applying some of this theory during the next Concepting stage.

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Gabriel Harp

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August 24, 2010, 04:22AM

Games are a really great form! One of the really difficult problems with using them is that people perceive them as not being "serious enough". This might be implemented easily for children, but adults often respond negatively at first when asked to "play" as a form of learning. Perhaps it comes from this insight: (from wikipedia) "Wittgenstein demonstrated that the elements of games, such as play, rules, and competition, all fail to adequately define what games are. People apply the term game to a range of disparate human activities."

When games are used as part of larger discussions it helps structure learning activities, the ability to fail without consequence, and in promoting memories fo the future.

Thinking explicitly about the elements of games is an incredibly useful exercise for students and teachers alike.

Some common ones include:
1) agents and actors,
2) their objectives,
3) the procedures they use to reach their objectives
4) the rules that constrain their actions
5) the resources they have to accomplish their goals
6) the boundaries of their interactions
7) the conflicts that ensue
8) the outcomes of those conflicts

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daniel sunden

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August 20, 2010, 07:52AM

Thank you Meena. a good point from you about maintance ,I hadn't thought about it but you are right.

About your link. On the right way, I think i imagined something that was more merged into the local society. More like a treasure hunt game maybe? In any case something bigger.
If that could be something that not only showed and taught the skills, but also showed them in a real life application. That would give the kids a direct answer to the often raised question: why are we learning this?

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