“Interactive game helps children understand polarisation”

Skillsdojo

The polarisation game forms part of the Skillsdojo platform. "A few years back, when my son was in year 4, he was getting through the material quite quickly," recalls Jeroen. "So we were told we could give him extra work. That ultimately led to me developing some lessons myself. I focused on digital skills, because he really enjoyed that kind of thing. After a while, my wife got involved as well. Once we'd developed about 4 lessons, we thought maybe we should make the material available to other parents. We applied to SIDN Fund for a pilot project grant, and we got it! When we published our lessons – which were on things like programming, deepfakes, robot-building and apps – we got a huge response. Loads of parents and teachers got in touch to say how useful they found our material."

Online polarisation teaching pack

"In 2021, we joined the NBD Biblion Foundation, so that we could make some real progress. We saw that SIDN Fund was calling for proposals on the theme of Getting a Grip on Polarisation, and that gave us the idea of developing a game for children aged 10 to 14 to explore the topic of polarisation. We chose that target group because that's the age at which children are consciously going online and coming into contact with social media. It's therefore an age when they're exposed to polarising influences. We're busy developing the game at the moment, with a view to launching on 20 February. From that date, children will be able to play it free of charge at school, at the library or at home."

Analogies from children's literature

"Polarisation is a topical issue, but it's no lightweight topic," Jeroen continues. "Polarising influences give us a black-and-white view of the world, when most people's views are shades of grey. We want the game to show children that, while people at the extremes often tend to shout the loudest, there are many, many people in between, who also deserve to be heard. We try to get that idea across using analogies from children's literature. We've chosen 9 books, each featuring some form of polarisation. For example, there's De Gorgels by Jochem Meijer, in which the Gorgels are up against other scary beings."

Digital escape game

"The book analogies and others are used in a digital escape game featuring puzzle tasks. Young Noah has to escape from an alternative dimension, and the children playing the game have to help him by solving puzzles. For example, they have to look in De Gorgels to find out who the Gorgels are up against. Or check another book's table of contents to discover something else. Entering the correct answer enables the players to move on to the next task. So they learn about polarisation in a playful way and are exposed to various books as they go. The comparisons also make the topic of polarisation discussable in class."

Support from SIDN Fund

"Skillsdojo is a community product of the NBD Biblion Foundation, and all our materials are developed under creative commons licences, with support from sponsors. SIDN Fund provided a lot of the money for our teaching pack about online polarisation. SIDN Fund is dedicated to helping to reinforce the internet for Dutch society. Our project, which is aimed mainly at young internet users, dovetails neatly with that objective. SIDN Fund has also helped us maximise the impact of our work through the Fund's contact network, as well as assisting us with product distribution. Their support has been invaluable."

Elise van Schaik, Project Coordinator at SIDN Fund: "Online polarisation may sound like a dense subject for children, but it's an important one. Because, unfortunately, children are exposed to polarising influences when they use social media. Skillsdojo has come up with an innovative, fun way of making the subject of online polarisation discussable for youngsters. Lots of children's stories involve polarisation and differences between characters. Children are therefore encouraged to find out how the characters in books resolve those differences, so that the children can apply the lessons they learn in their own (online) interactions. The ultimate aim is to increase children's knowledge of the online world."

Plans for the future

"Children get very absorbed when playing games, sometimes making it difficult to achieve particular educational goals. Our approach is therefore to use the game mainly to help children develop their understanding of polarisation. We're planning to produce a series of supporting lesson plans, which teachers can use to discuss the topic in class and get children exchanging views. The term 'polarisation' tends to have negative associations. So we want to use the lesson plans to get across the idea that people can achieve more by talking and listening to each other. We'll start work on the lesson plans once the polarisation game has gone live."