Doing Good with Tech for Kids
If you can command the attention of a lot of people, it shouldn’t be too hard to start them thinking about how to make a better world and get some traction for your efforts. There is, however, a lot of competition out there, for your attention, for your time, for your loyalty to one social media channel or another, or to a particular tech device you use. Add to this an increasingly competitive ecosystem in crowdfunding, and you have yourself a challenge.
LeVar Burton’s ‘Reading Rainbow’ Kickstarter campaign famously broke through the noise, raising $5 million in record time. One factor contributing to its success was the unvarnished authenticity the campaign projected. Even if you knew nothing about the old ‘Reading Rainbow’ show on PBS, you still received a clear signal on the Kickstarter page that Mr. Burton really meant it when he wanted to teach more kids how to read. Another factor was the passionate culture of reading already in place to support the campaign. Mr. Burton was ready, willing and able to leverage that culture to its greatest advantage.
What’s most remarkable about ‘Reading Rainbow’s’ Kickstarter success is that it’s an app. Parents usually are afraid of apps. At least, they’re itchy about getting their very young children hooked on devices. Even Steve Jobs limited his kids’ screen time, as reported by Nick Bilton in The New York Times. We have vowed to keep video games out of the home as long as possible. They may never enter here, and our young son, like my older son, will only experience them on somebody else’s device, on somebody else’s turf, and later in life.
Then there is the iPad.
Our two and a half year old loves playing with Garage Band on an iPad. He can identify a snare, a kick drum, a high-hat, and knows the sonic differences between a grand piano, a clav, and an electric piano. He has a sense of major and minor chords. More importantly, he recognizes these differences when he listens to the radio, far away from the iPad, identifying jazz and classical music and (usually) screaming out, ‘That’s a KICK drum!’
Is there an educational platform for kids that can live on an iPad? Gregory Hansell thinks so. He’s running an IndieGoGo campaign for a tablet game called A Better World for Kids — Finally, a Game for Good. It’s, as he describes it in his pitch, a mobile game teaching values like kindness, giving, anti-bullying, recycling, and healthy eating. I asked him to answer a view questions about the game, and the campaign, via email.
Lee: Why did you decide to do this campaign?
Gregory Hansell: Our company, A Better World, has been in the ‘good business’ for over 11 years. We started out working in the business-to-business space with products that help people bring fun and positivity to training and management, and then over the years branched out into the prosumer and consumer marketplaces.
Five years ago we started our efforts to bring doing good to social media and social gaming with a game on Facebook also called ‘A Better World,’ that uses social game mechanics to encourage people to be positive and help others. Over 2.7 million people have done more than 25 million good deeds in a better world, including sending get well notes to real world sick children, random acts of kindness, expressing gratitude, sharing hopes and dreams, and more.
What are your greatest hopes for this tablet-based project on IndieGoGo?
Gregory Hansell: Our greatest hopes for A Better World for Kids are about channeling the immersive, imaginative, and interactive aspects of games toward encouraging the best in kids and teaching them how to be good, do good, and feel good. That means many kids playing the game and using it regularly for good. If we can achieve that, then we will have succeeded.
Education games can work because parents recognize their value for their children. But why will kids like your game?
Gregory Hansell: From the outset our primary concern was creating a game that kids would love. We had heard from many parents that they were already playing our Facebook game with their kids. These parents told us their kids loved the game, but we wanted to make a game directly for kids and besides Facebook’s terms of service don’t allow kids under 13 to register.
We then reached out to kids gaming experts and did some focus groups with both kids and parents. The response to this was excellent, with kids loving the art and gameplay, and of course parents loving the message behind the medium. We’re also working with these same experts to make sure we build on game mechanics that kids already love. We have a ‘kids first’ philosophy to insure that the game is fun and not ‘eating your veggies,’ although we do encourage that!
Greg has used his personal and social networks to reach out to supporters, personal networks, colleagues and customers. For a crowdfunding campaign to work, however, he needs a wider circle, one that includes people who don’t know him personally; people like you.
The campaign is on IndieGoGo and ends this week, so have a look.
