At the end of May, the final meeting of Gamify+ was held in Poland. Partners met to share experiences about the impacts of training courses, game development sessions, and local activities carried out athroughout the long-term project. Shokkin Group’s team consisted of Tanel, Nastja, Kolia and Krystyna, who were involved in testing the game and running it in the field with young people.
During the evaluation meeting, a local conference was organized for all partners to share their experiences with the public. In total, more than 80 local young people and educators participated in the conference. On our part, we shared our experience in designing and implementing educational escape games.
Our keynote presentation focused on the “whys” and “hows” of game-based learning, as well as the potential of educational escape games in classroom settings. By explaining core pedagogical foundations such as active learning, increased engagement and motivation, and the natural social-emotional learning fostered by escape games, we demonstrated why educators and students should not be afraid to incorporate games into the learning process. We also highlighted how intention and preparedness are essential for the effective use of games in education.
We then played the game “Escape from Neon City” with youngsters from various countries. The most joyous part of the whole conference was finally sharing this game with its target audience after a long period of development and iteration! It was exciting to discuss the different media-related topics that this game brought up in the playing groups of 4-5 youngsters.
“Gamify+” was a project coordinated by Cesta Rozvoje, co-funded by the European Union and implemented with the support of the Czech National Agency.