Tech - A new tech teacher

Sreelatha Menon


A new game-making tool that helps primary school children create their own digital games may be our answer to lack of quality education at the primary level.


Children in many UK schools have a new teacher. She doesn’t chide or hit them or mock at them. She plays with them everyday and children detest leaving her. Nor does she, like in some Indian schools, stay away.

Known as Mission Maker, she is a game-making tool that helps primary school children create their own digital games. It allows for creation of 3D adventure and puzzle games without the need for prior programming experience.

The software has assets such as locations (rooms and corridors), props, characters, pick-ups (objects the player can pick up and examine), triggers (which trigger an action) and media (sound and images, both still and moving).

Professor Anne Anderson, head of college in the University of Dundee, UK, presented the success story of Mission Maker at the launch of the India office of the Research Councils UK in New Delhi this week.

She said the project was a product of the Institute of Education, London, with the backing of a private partner and was now in operation in several schools in the UK.

Social and educational research today is about designing enchanting technologies like cell phones and game-authoring tools which fulfill a need, she says, adding that the Educational and Social Research Council (ESRC), one of the seven councils under the Research Councils UK, was supporting 30 such education projects in the UK.

Three- to four-year-old Indian city children sit glued to computer for hours googling for games on Spiderman, Batman and Power Rangers and within days ask for newer ones, even though they can’t read a word.

They abandon these only for outdoor games and cartoons. Maybe this suggests what fails to make education a happy experience.

Economist Abhijit V Banerjee, during a talk in New Delhi once, talked of some studies done in Mumbai and Vadodara on making education attractive and effective, that is, cutting dropout rates and improving comprehension.

While one used local tutors to devote special attention, the other used audio-visual means. He said both got results but a combination of the two would have been ideal.

A mix of technology or role-playing methods and lesser dependence on disinterested teachers was probably the way out rather than more overpaid-yet-absentee government teachers, he said.

Mission Maker was a result of collaboration between technologists, industry and social scientists, said Anderson.

It was created by educationist Caroline Pelletier under the umbrella of the ESRC.

Indo-UK collaboration through the Research Councils (RC) UK is expected to further joint research in areas of digital access, health, space technology, energy, and environment. A fund of £5 million has been set aside for South Asian countries.

The only other RC offices outside the UK are in China and the US. The Indian government has already okayed 10 project proposals which may include some on education, according to the Department of Science and Technology. The UK office has to now screen these proposals. Industry partners are yet to be known.

Will the collaboration make Indian policy-makers think out of the box? While the head of the country’s Department of Science and Technology was present at the launch, the chief education research institution in the country, the National University for Educational Research and Planning, was among the invitees.

Just scan through the research papers of the National University for Educational Research and Planning, which creates new recipes for improving education in India. Its research topics include inclusive education and it even has a Department for International Cooperation. Whether this effort translates into improvement on the ground is not backed by evidence.