My son went to school for the first time 5 years ago and to be honest nothing had changed at all from 25 years ago. The school looked the same, it also smelled the same, but now with two old computers in the back of the classroom. Uninspiring and no longer really in line with today’s society, where computer technology has made a huge leap. There is internet in every family, most adults have a smartphone or a tablet at home and you watch TV on-demand.
Nowadays children are not only playing classic card- and board games anymore, but they also love WIIs and games on the iPad, and they are more handy with computers than we parents are. But at school they have to deal with sometimes outdated books, maps on the wall and often an old-fashioned blackboard. I thought: can’t education be better by making it more fun?
This was the start of Squla. 4 years ago I rented an attic in my hometown and was allowed to have lunch with another company on the first floor. From there I started to think out and work out what Squla should become. Soon I was convinced of the holy trinity in education: school, parent and child. In my opinion, optimal cooperation between those 3 parties ensures the best result. Education knows what important subjects, content and knowledge are, children know what they like and the stimulus from parents works like no other.
And now 4 years later, we are sitting at our own lunch table in the Squla office in Amsterdam with a team of 25 people, mostly game developers and education specialists, and have incorporated the complete curriculum of the primary school into games. Everything at the right level thanks to adaptive technology. Children play at home with and against friends, teachers play with the class and parents follow and encourage via the Parent App.
And my son; he practices reading comprehension in a way that really fires the imagination, and in between playing outside he calculates himself to the next level.
Well, that’s how it started…