2019 Games for Change Festival

Research evidence from the science of learning reflects that games are a great way to learn. Leveraging the power of technology allows for deeply engaged, fun, interactive, multisensory, experiential  and personalized learning to occur. There is no doubt that with our future generations being digital natives, digital pedagogies and games will become increasingly adopted to teach social emotional skills, 21st century skills and even core disciplines such as maths, sciences and even language in the classrooms of the future. But here comes the challenge. If there is not some form of quality control just as we have in textbooks, the golden goose that we have can very easily kill itself.  It is in this spirit that UNESCO MGIEP organized a High level policy Forum in November 2018, in the city of Vishakhapatnam (Vizag.) to draft the first call for the need of some form of guidance that will serve to support the golden goose to nurture and be sustainable.  The outcome was the Vizag Declaration.

The Vizag Declaration calls for the need for guidelines that set some boundary conditions without infringing on creativity and guidelines that identify characteristics and parameters important for delivering active and engaging learning. These guidelines are meant to steer the industry and content developers in education technology and games for learning to align their products with principles and core values that help in building 21st century skills to foster sustainable and peaceful societies. These guidelines can help teachers, parents, school administrators, policy makers to make informed decisions about age appropriate, culturally meaningful digital learning solutions that mitigate any negative impact of such a deck of choices. …. Without such guidelines the opportunity provided by games for learning to transform education may fritter away. The golden goose must thrive.