“When we think about young children; we think about endless energy, we think about play time, we think about them jumping around. Research has shown that the traditional black board teaching doesn’t work well with all children. Young children have
different learning styles; some learn by looking, some by listening while many others by watching or moving. When we put them in our classrooms today confined to their chairs, most of them can’t explore all these styles.” So, the children need something new in their education, they need some new style of learning that gives them joy, fun and entertainment. Physical Activities are a must need for children with their education. Being active in physical activities helps in their growth, health and development. It’s a natural need for their passive development in education. Many educational startups are creating their own way of solutions in making learning easy and effective. In this article, we’re focusing on Nayi Disha.
Nayi Disha creates fun educational computer games for young children that require physical activity from the child. Nayi Disha ’s motto behind creating these computer games for preschool children is to make their learning fun and more engaging. These games are mainly based on motion sensing technology. The games here are fundamentally based on Howard Gardner’s theory of Multiple Intelligences. As written in the beginning, young kids have different learning styles – some learn by looking, some by listening, and many others by moving. Motion based technology helps children learn through their respective learning styles. Since this is based on moments, kids are no longer sedentary and teachers find them more involved, interested and focused.
Nayi Disha Game features:
Encourages Physical Exercises:
The games focus on physical activities of children which indirectly give them fresh mind to concentrate on studies. As you know, physical exercises is related to mind work; students will get this benefit with these motion sensor technology.
Audio based:
Games include music, sound track, songs and interesting ringtones; these features will attract children. Instead of reading and writing, children will be more interested on this audio based learning.
3D Experience:
Children love this feature; the characters, new worlds and interactive graphics will give awesome experience.
Story Based:
It’s like digital storytelling concept. All games have short stories and concepts will be taught in the form of real experience. The games have been built for every concept in preschool to give a comprehensive solution.
Nayi Disha was founded by graduates from BITS-Pilani and Stanford. Kartik Aneja and Kushal Bhagia, batch mates from BITS-Pilani, Goa Campus, are the co-founders of the company.
“To begin with, the hardware investment from the school is extremely low because most private Indian schools already have Smart boards and projectors. The only additional purchase required is the Microsoft Kinect for Windows.” says Kartik, Co-founder.
“We offer the school an end-to-end solution. We install the hardware, conduct teacher training workshops, share carefully designed lesson plans with the school, and also offer support (technical and pedagogical) for our product,” adds Kushal Bhagia, co-founder.
Example:
The words by co-founder, “We are trying to make the entire process much more natural for the child. Instead of drawing the numbered line on the notebook, a child physically jumps through the numbered line. Instead of using a mouse or a key board to fly a spaceship, a child fly it as he was there in their imagination; he just extent his hands, turn left, turn right and this is how he fly it. We just try making the entire process much more fun, much more intuitive and very natural for children. In one particular game, Kaju, or a character, he runs out of fuel and his space ship runs on color. So, a child basically go through colored hoops which are set in space, every time he goes through a hoop, some color is filled back into his spaceship. Eventually he re-fuels the spaceship like that and the child has to pick what color to pick next. That’s how children learn colors and they win the game.”
In Virtual games are becoming an integral part of Children’s education. Virtual games not only help children think psychologically but also make their moves physically. Nayi Disha’s product is being installed at several prestigious schools and pre-schools in Delhi, Mumbai, and Jaipur. Contact them if you want to implement this technology in your school.
