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Technology Lifestyle SmartyCard Learn-Earn-Play games offer tweens rewards
Technology Lifestyle SmartyCard Learn-Earn-Play games offer tweens rewards | SmartyCard Learn-Earn-Play games offer tweens rewards |
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| by Mike Bantick | |
| Tuesday, 31 March 2009 | |
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For tweens, kids in the grade 3 to 6 range, there can be many distractions from the job at hand. Many of these distractions come from companies who see a dollar in this. The SmartyCard company have launched a new initiative to give kids rewards for learning, and parents a way to ensure kids can learn in a controlled, but self motivating environment. SmartyCard’s system allows kids to earn points by playing interactive educational games and quizzes, which are then redeemed for popular real-world and virtual-world rewards. SmartyCard currently has a catalogue of over 200 real and virtual rewards to earn and purchase, and after a fast start, company data shows nearly 85 percent of the points have been redeemed for virtual-world prizes. I spoke to SmartyCard General Manager Chris Carvalho this week and asked about the fact that the SmartyCard system, whilst global, will – because of the educational aspects of the site – need to be regionalised as it is rolled out. “Absolutely,” agreed Carvalho, “in the short term we are US based, and we will focus on that. Certainly if someone were from Australia or the UK, they could access it and try it out. But we are focussing on the US first and then we are going to regionalise it, take the content and make sure it is appropriate for each market as we go. For instance right now, we have licensed content from leading educational partners, such as Ignite Learning and LearnStar, and then we have our own staff further breaking up the content into easy, medium and hard, so that the content is served up appropriately.” So when can other regions expect the SmartyCard system rollout? “We haven’t put any timeframes out there yet, “ Carvalho says. “It is certainly something we are looking at, but we don’t have anything set in stone. By the end of the year we will have some announcements “ How have traditional education outlets received the SmartyCard Learn-Earn-and-Play model? “Teachers have commented very favourably on how we have put education here that does meet school curriculum challenges, but is also fun so that children are engaged,” “One of the testimonies we recently got from a parent said that her child had tried to start learning with lots of different apparatus and supplemental education outside of school, and we just put it on shelf after one or two times,. With Smarty-card it is so fun, she just wants to keep playing, and by playing she is learning things. We find that over and over again from both parents and educators.” SmartyCard is affiliated with and heading towards being one of the popular, child inhabited virtual world how are they monitored? How do you avoid the darker side of the web? Carvalho explains; “it is one thing that we always have to keep an eye on, one of our project managers’ job is to ensure these websites are not compromised. Within Smarty-Card there is no way for one child to communicate with another child and provide personal information. At some point down the road, I am sure we will have ways for a child to have a ‘brag-board’ to show how smart they are, but there is no way for a child to communicate across the virtual worlds.” Of course, with a reward system, the actual rewards are important. “One of the fundamental attractions of SmartyCard is the breadth of available real-world and virtual-world rewards for tweens,” said Carvalho. “We expected that the majority of initial rewards earned through SmartyCard would fall in the category of access to virtual worlds and we’re excited that our expectations have been validated by real people using SmartyCard.com to earn rewards. We’re confident that the new partners we’re adding now and in the future will continue to enjoy popularity with our customers.” More information about the SmartyCard reward system and set-up on Page 2 |
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