Jirafa

Jirafa World
Jirafa World is a project started in 2008 to develop an online role-playing game for children aged 6 to 10. The project is made in collaboration between game developers from Jirafa AB, researchers from Malmö University and teachers and children from Björnbodaskolan primary school in Stockholm, Sweden.
The project has been granted financial support from Vinnova, the Swedish authority for innovation systems. The main objective of the project is to develop an online educational game and to demonstrate its ability to motivate children to learn Mathematics.

There are several unique properties of this project the most important ones being:

  • The development process is extremely user centered. The main story line and content of the game will be developed in a series of workshops with children in Björnbodaskolan during the spring of 2009. The children will truly be co-creators of the game.
  • Researchers, teachers and game developers will work in close collaboration throughout the development process. All roles are seen as key to develop a game that will have high entertainment values and invoke the children’s interest to learn more Math.
  • The project will actively involve the parents of the children and find ways of including the parents as co-players. The main reason for this is that the parents’ involvement is seen as a very important motivating factor for the children.

The first version of Jirafa World will be developed by October 2009 and tested in several primary schools in Stockholm during the autumn. Prior to this project, Jirafa AB and Björnbodaskolan primary school have been collaborating on the development of a series of educational mini-games that have been developed according to the national knowledge goals in Mathematics and Swedish. These mini-games were included in the school curriculum during the autumn of 2008 and resulted in very interesting findings regarding the ability of children to learn through educational games and the individual differences between children regarding motivation and learning styles in relation to educational games.