Imagine a game where you explore your surroundings, encounter a talking cat, and solve puzzles to search for an elusive treasure.
This is how Primary 5 students at Gan Eng Seng Primary School (GESPS) are deepening their understanding about sustainability, thanks to their school’s partnership with Move Technologies, a social enterprise that aims to tackle real-world problems with virtual products.
Enhancing the existing Applied Learning Programme
The immersive gamified experience, where students learn about food packaging while exploring a simulation of their neighbourhood, is a recent addition to the suite of learning experiences within GESPS’s Applied Learning Programme (ALP) on food sustainability, From Farm to Table. According to Ms Brina Tan, the Head of Department of Science at GESPS and the school’s ALP coordinator, the ALP aims to develop “confident communicators, critical and creative thinkers, as well as students who are more curious about their learning.”
For Primary 5 students, the programme focuses on the topic of food packaging – understanding properties of materials suitable for use as food packaging, distinguishing between biodegradable and non-biodegradable options, as well as exploring ways to reduce food packaging waste.
“Students at this age may be starting to pack food to bring to school or from hawker centres to bring home to their family,” Ms Tan explains. “We want them to be role models and positive influences on those around them by making more sustainable choices in food packaging.”
While existing learning experiences within the ALP enabled students to learn the content, the initial rollout of the programme – Move Technologies hadn’t come into the picture then – didn’t quite get the response intended. “Students had in-class discussions and projects, and went on a learning journey on upcycling,” says Ms Tan. “Some of our students, being very hands-on and kinaesthetic in nature, found the classroom portions a bit dry.”
While considering how to make the programme more engaging for all students, the teachers in the ALP team wondered: what if students could learn through a self-paced game with puzzles to keep them motivated and actively involved? This way, their understanding of the content could be assessed too.
Joining hands with Move Technologies
That was when MOE’s Partnerships Engagement Office (PEO) connected GESPS with Move Technologies. The PEO links up schools with the community and interested industry organisations to create meaningful learning experiences for students. And Move Technologies seemed like a good fit to help with GESPS’s conundrum, as it had experience creating virtual learning journeys with immersive educational puzzle trails.
Co-founder of Move Technologies, Mr Lim Yee Hung says that he was curious about the partnership and other ventures it might possibly lead to. He also recounts being drawn to the “genuine goodness about GESPS’s intentions to develop and nurture students”.
After understanding the school’s needs and collaborating with the GESPS ALP team, Move Technologies produced a prototype of a gamified learning experience to be played on the iPad.
The game’s success in the classroom – and beyond
According to Mr Lim, the game’s interactive and exploratory elements adopt a “quiet way of teaching where you don’t tell students what to learn”. Instead, students learn by playing a game. By sparking their interest through enjoyable, hands-on experiences, Mr Lim hopes to empower them to self-direct their learning. Evidently, the strategy worked.
The game was first piloted in May 2024 and introduced to 30-odd students who “enjoyed looking for clues in the virtual neighbourhood”, says Ms Tan. “The immersive experience was also much better received than simply having them read text on paper,” she notes, adding that the students also internalised relevant learning points and applied what they learnt outside of lessons. For instance, some students were overheard reminding their friends to use a reusable water bottle instead of buying a new bottle of water during recess.
“We see our students being more conscious about dabao-ing food,” Ms Tan says. “They also started encouraging their parents to make more sustainable choices and to cut down the amount of food packaging used.”
EdTech – when education meets technology
Student feedback gathered from the pilot programme in 2024 is being used to refine the game before rolling it out to this year’s Primary 5 cohort. “The game doesn’t replace the existing ALP. Instead, we are leveraging EdTech to enhance the student learning experience and better engage our students,” Ms Tan explains.
For Move Technologies, this partnership is not a whim, as the company is also developing programmes for learning with other schools. As Mr Lim puts it, “There’s something sacred about kids’ education because the receivers, which are the students, are malleable, impressionable people. And the reward of being involved in the moulding of our future generations is not something that is easily quantified.”
Photos courtesy of: Gan Eng Seng Primary School
.jpg)
