Esprominho’s GamifIEd project: a database of digital games for more interesting classes
Esprominho has been an active partner in the framework of the Erasmus+ Project nº 2019-1-BE02-KA229-060216_2 Gamification in Interdisciplinary Education – GamifIEd, whose objectives are to create a vast database of digital games, didactic approaches, presentations that will make classes more interesting, attractive and interactive. Another aim is to familiarize pupils and teachers with digital applications in order to facilitate learning in a more playful environment, to raise pupils’ and teachers’ cultural awareness by exploring the culture of the partner countries, to build on and extend the pupils’ knowledge of the different topics that will be addressed in the course of the project, to improve the quality of education by implementing digital games and to improve cognitive, critical, social, communicative, digital skills (improved interest and results in specific subjects).
The countries involved in this project are Belgium (as the coordinator), Hungary, Spain, Italy, Czech Republic, and Portugal. Each partner will involve about 20 students aged 15-19 who will be actively committed to the project since they will have to prepare specific material to be presented during the mobility and uploaded on Twinspace.
Six meetings with the pupils are expected to take place, one in each country with one central topic. Before each meeting, every school is assigned an aspect of the central topic. The pupils will have extra classes during which they will develop ten educational games and work on. During the meetings, the host school organize a welcome party and all results will be collected, presented to the other pupils and tested.
So far, two short-term exchanges of pupils have taken place, the first one in October 2019 in Granollers, Spain, and then in February 2020 in Zlín (Czech Republic).
All the students attending the partner schools have a crucial role in the development of activities carried out during the project, as they learn subjects from different curricular areas while designing digital games based on web platform resources. The games are aimed at other students and teachers, not only from the partners involved in the project, but also all internet users who will be targeted by the project’s dissemination activities.
The expected results are the production of ten online educational games per topic which means that there should be 360 different games that will be available for use. For every meeting, one matrix per topic will be created by the pupils, thus, there will be six matrices.
The main priorities that have been set for this project are: open education and innovative practices in a digital era, supporting individuals in acquiring and developing basic skills and key competences, and sustainable investment, quality and efficiency of education, training and youth systems.
It can be said that the project’s motto is: learn, play.