LearnWithPleasure

Learning hard science through a fun game.

Modern textbooks are boring. People have great technology at their disposal, but it is almost not used to create high quality educational games. When it comes to natural science most kids experience 'science anxiety' and boredom. 

Another problem is the stereotypes: STEM is for boys, science is for crazy grey-haired professors, not for common people.

Only 56% of survey respondents say their schools have at least half of the course materials available in digital format (Pearson Education survey).

Who remembers what Avogadro's constant is for? Almost nobody. But those who played Super Mario Bros remember vividly that you can kill Goomba mushroom by jumping on top of it. If the game's core mechanics uses science, you'll remember the science very well.

Study by M. T. Marino & M. Israel proves that educational video games are able to change the kids' attitude towards science for better significantly (New York 2012, Journal of Science Education and Technology). 

Also notice: a textbook cannot close itself and prevent you from reading further if you don't understand the chapter. But a game can!

The solution comes in the form of iOS (and later Android) app. Any child who has the capacity to install the app can play an educational game. During testing the pilot product we can expect 50000 people to download it from the AppStore. Also we plan to contact certain schools and teachers and have our app tested by them.

Track downloads and measure engagement using Google Analytics for mobile devices - 50000 people play our pilot product

Run questionnaires with the teachers - 20 teachers use the pilot product in classroom

There are plenty of educational games but almost none of them deal with serious natural science concepts. There are plenty of games that teach to code and to solve math problems. If you try to find a high quality game dealing with STEM or biology you will find next to nothing.

Besides, our pilot product "Hi Nano" was featured by Apple in "Best apps for kids" section, which means they also think the app is quite unique.

People today live with superstitions in their brains. Sometimes superstition can be harmful or even fatal. Isn't it because today science and education is not for commoners, but for some kind of intellectual or economical elite? So we are trying to fight it. Science should be familiar, popular and accessible to anybody. It should be a survival tool for everybody.

We start with iOS devices but our aim is to build educational games that can run on any cheap (second hand) android smartphone or tablet that costs no more than $50.

A game itself can cost $1-$5 or can be distributed free or monetised through ads.

We're bootstrapping. Some of us have jobs or businesses that we run during this period.

1. Some people are not ready to bring technology to the classrooms

2. Some people still lack modern computing devices

3. Building a proper game is no easy task so it can take quite a few attempts for our team to build what we aim.

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We need funding and mentoring. Currently our team lacks resources to pay developers, game-designers and UI/UX designers.

We also would appreciate mentoring from successful app developers and marketers as well as anybody who has an experience of creating e-learning tool.

We have got acquainted with the people who produce well-known educational cartoons in Russia called "Fixies". We can have a partnership with them when in comes to distribution of our games.

Toca Boca, Tiny Bop, Filament Games