Years ago I moved to Latin America for a reclycing project at the Chiquita banana plantations and I was shocked to realise no one spoke English. In my first days I felt helpless and isolated - not able to express myself. This circumstances pushed me to learn Spanish fast - 10 words a day, practice the most used verbs and keywords like "entonces"...and yes falling in love helped too.
After three months I was able to give a presentation and to write a full feasibility study in Spanish.
Freedom
Learn at your own pace
During my time as teacher on a primary school in Amsterdam, Covid was taking place and because of that we had to switch to online classes.
I experimented with embedding learning material in interesting and powerfull stories with audio/visual and textual support. It was playfull with quizzes, challenges, funny video's, short tutorials and freedom. Freedom to choose a topic, freedom to choose the moment to work on it and freedom to choose out of a variety of weekly assignments. And it worked, after this online period, my group of students was performing much better then comparable peer groups. This fueled my belief that finding the intrinsic motivation is one of the main keys in learning. With this mindset we developed the platform.
As teacher on primary schools I learned that intrinsic motivation is the key for learning and I believe there are a number of circumstances that make you motivated.
- If you are interested in the subject
- If it is practically applicable
- If it is connected to a story
- If it is connected with one of your passions
- If it is fun to do
- If you get rewarded for it
- If it's important for survival
With this mindset we developed the program.
