Innovation

The Magic Garden tackles the following issues:

• Around 25% of preschool children lack the conceptual foundations in mathematics to be ready for primary school mathematics.
• Children from resource-poor families or children with major language challenges often struggle to keep up with primary school mathematics.
• Some children lose faith early on that they can become good at maths.

The Magic Garden, play-and-learn game, is distinguished by

the fact that it incorporates research-based knowledge and many years of experience about learning processes. The game's pedagogy of learning-by-teaching also provides children with various learning challenges better conditions to prepare for primary school mathematics. Additionally, the game features an extensive resource package for preschool teachers.

The innovation support from the faculties of HT and LU Innovation has been used for:

Two people have been able to prepare and learn how to scale up and distribute this type of solution further, with regard to both legal and economic aspects. They have also been able to investigate certain technical aspects of scaling up as well as opportunities for more professional voice recording.

Read an interview with Agneta Gulz about The Magic Garden (Article in Swedish)

MITA solves the following problems

Multilingual children often do not learn their mother tongue well if it is a minority language in the country where they live.

• Children have too few opportunities to speak the language to learn it well.
• Children have difficulty identifying with the minority language because they often do not have peers to speak the language with, which lowers their motivation to learn it.

The digital platform MITA stands out thanks to its research-based pedagogy that is based on play and that the learning of the Italian language takes place in the game Minecraft led by a didactically competent moderator. The game motivates children to learn the language, partly because they want to progress in the game, partly through the natural conversations that arise between children both inside and outside the game.

The 100,000 SEK from the faculties of HT and LU Innovation have been used for:

• The company Hemkodat to build the MITA server (Discord/Minecraft) and serve it during activities.
• A research assistant who has done assignments and leads the game.
• Hours for project management.

Read an interview with Petra Bernardini about MITA
Go to the project website for MITA. (Site in Swedish)

Hekima encounters is a response to the following societal problems:

• Investments made in developing countries often fail due to a lack of knowledge and understanding of the culture in the country.
• The marginalised in developing countries cannot themselves make their voices heard in the decision-making of aid efforts.
• The decision-making today is top-down when a democratic bottom-up decision-making is needed.

As an innovation HEKIMA characterised by

its focus on allowing local people in developing countries to determine what help they need by conveying their knowledge of their local culture and situation to decision-makers in aid organisations. In this way, HEKIMA can also become a part of the decolonisation of these countries; that local people can film, conduct interviews, and communicate with only a mobile phone, which is the tool they have access to.

The funds from the HT faculties and LU Innovation has been used for:

Travel to Kenya – Billy Jones and the filmmaker have traveled to Kenya for two weeks in 2021 to train the local population to film and conduct interviews themselves.

A prototype – to produce five videos, a podcast, several short articles, and to build a platform prototype that shows how the concept works.
 
Salaries – salaries for two project members in Kenya for six months.

Link to an interview with Billy Jones where he talks more about Hekima. (In Swedish).