Charity

Embodying better classroom values through physical play

Community-building classroom exercises, supported by digital tools

Client

Julemærkehjemmene

Organisation

Charity

Audience

Primary school, 4th-6th grade

Purpose

Helping students develop and articulate better classroom community values together

Physical games, digital backbone

This hybrid game for primary school classrooms, developed for Danish charity organisation Julemærkehjemmene, combines physical trust-building activities, collaborative communication exercises, and shared puzzle-solving. The game is designed to help students develop better classroom communities focused on inclusion, diversity and togetherness, through play. All of this is delivered within a lighthearted narrative about aliens landing on Earth, with students helping them with better communications, and building a school of their own.

The game builds on the familiar “scavenger hunt” format, and takes students through different exercises spread out over the school grounds. This distinguishes it from most other DiBL cases, and indeed, the DiBL platform plays only a supportive role here, structuring the exercises, letting students share their thoughts, and facilitating a final, collaborative puzzle-solving exercise, which incorporates clues given to students throughout the main game.

We believe strongly that digital games and learning materials should reinforce shared classroom learning, not replace it. That’s why we’ve built the DiBL platform with a facilitator in mind, and with the assumption that participants should interact with each other first, and their devices second. This game builds on that, using DiBL as part of a larger toolbox to create a cohesive, impactful game experience that is not afraid to leave the screen behind when it needs to.

With our many years of experience designing and building educational game experiences across many different media, both physical and digital, we designed and built not only the DiBL-driven aspects of this game, but also the exercises and analgue game materials. Through co-creation workshops, Julemærkefonden’s experienced teachers were able to share their expertise and help shape the game, and all materials, from the narrative frame to the visual presentation, were developed in close collaboration with the client.