Game facts and game description

Description

Interactive learning, movement and fun!
ActiveFloor is an interactive floor where children navigate in and play various activities
and learning games by using their feet.

An interactive floor for any child (and adult) who likes to play

With an interactive floor you give kids of all ages the possibility to learn and develop –
both intellectually, physically and socially – in the way that is the most natural for them:
by using the whole body.
Right now, you can find ActiveFloor at schools, nursery schools, libraries, hospitals and in
various playing areas all around the world.

Active Floor consists of three main elements

1. A ceiling-mounted installation box with a projector and a computer.
2. A camera that tracks movement.
3. A white vinyl floor that makes up the foundation of your interactive playing area.

“Teachers and students, children and educators across the world love Active Floor”

For many years, students have been asked to sit still when they have been taught to read,
write and do maths – but today we know that bringing in movement over the course of the
day can further students’ learning, motivation and their well-being at school.
With an interactive floor from ActiveFloor, the students get an equal approach to auditive,
visual and kinetic learning. ActiveFloor creates greater interactivity and makes it possible
to strengthen the collaboration and communication in the classroom.
The learning games with content for maths, language arts and science provide you, as a
teacher, with plenty of opportunities to integrate movement and ‘fun’ in the teaching of
students – and you can even make your very own game content. When you work with movement and gamification, you catch the students’ attention in a whole new way while you bring in the learning targets of the individual subjects.

Interactive learning game templates

ActiveFloor has developed a great number of learning games that are ready for use, but
teachers as well as students can easily make their very own learning content, by
uploading their own content through our website, and thereby creating their own games.
Do you teach maths, English or science? You can decide the content and the degree of
difficulty that suits you.
Source: https://activefloor.com

Project outline

 The idea and purpose of incorporating ActiveFloor in the classroom was because learning
should be fun. Furthermore, I have experienced the advantages of game-based teaching in
my classes regarding the students’ motivation to attend school, and how it could improve
their learning outcomes and help them succeed with their education. Acknowledging the
benefits of game-based teaching and learning, I believed that ActiveFloor would contribute
to build confidence in the classroom by improving the students’ motivation, socialisation,
solidarity, collaboration and thus their learning success, because of the hidden learning
scenarios that occur playing games. The students learn without really knowing it, as they
have to use their proficiency in a subject or their foreign language skill to be able to solve
a problem or a task etc., and without realising it, they practice an area from the curriculum
and some of the skills mentioned. Finally, they laugh and have a good time together.
As a part of the curriculum, in my 9th grade English language teaching class, Canada was
one of the topics with following overall learning goals:
1. To Learn about Canada, the country, the people and the Canadian culture
2. To be able to use new words
3. To be able to make a summary of a text
4. To understand the main contents of text
5. To be able to ask and answer questions
6. To be able to compare the Canadian culture to the Danish culture
I decided to incorporate an ActiveFloor INTERACTIVE MEMORY GAME to the learning design
to help the students achieving following learning goals:
1. Enlarging their vocabulary – They had to learn new words and afterwards, in pairs to
be able to make a summary of the read text: “Canada – Great and Diverse” using only
10 different pictures in the book as key words.
2. Pronunciation: They had to read and pronounce the new words.

ACTIVITY: INTERACTIVE MEMORY GAME

The students should play an interactive memory game consisting of 10 tricks or 20 cards –
with 10 new words from the text read and an English explanation of the words. When they
turn the cards, they should pronounce the words.
Introducing and presenting the topic Canada in class, I described that they were supposed
to play the ActiveFloor interactive memory game, learning new words. Many of the
students were already familiar with ActiveFloor and knew some of the games and
templates available on the platform as they had played them earlier in class, and they
looked forward to playing the new game. The students were divided into 4 teams of max. 4
participants per team and played the memory game 3 times for approximately 45 minutes.

How to embed

Bringing ActiveFloor to your classroom, as a teacher, maybe you may have to think
differently about how you define successful teaching, e.g., in regard to the loss of control –
when handing control over to the students, while they are playing and you as the teacher
can still be confident that they are learning something – because they do! Playing games,
the students practice a number of skills e.g., they collaborate as a team, they are social and active, they plan a strategy to be capable of playing the game the best way and to win.

Use in class

Topic Canada

Introduction: Word Zoom activity

As an introduction to the topic Canada, we made a word zoom. The students should write
down all the words they knew with the letter C and afterwards, in pair work tell them to
each other. In plenum, all the students mentioned one of their words and then in groups
of 4, they should make sentences with the words and read them out loud to each other.

Introduction: Pre-reading activity

As a pre-reading activity, in a plenum on a Padlet wall, in groups of 4, they should answer 4 opening questions to the topic Canada and afterwards, read their answers out loud to the whole class.
The next task was to read an informative text about Canada – Called “Canada – GREAT AND
DIVERSE”
In plenum, we read and listened to the text. Afterwards, in groups of 4, the students
should translate the text into Danish orally. We did that in plenum as well and one of the
grammar areas was to focus on the use of normal and inverse word order when translating
the text into Danish.

ActiveFloor: INTERACTIVE MEMORY GAME

4 TEAMS OF MAX. 4 PARTICIPANTS PER TEAM.

ACTIVITY: INTERACTIVE MEMORY GAME

In teams, they should play an interactive memory game consisting of 10 tricks or 20 cards
– with 10 new words from the text read and an English explanation of the words. When
they turn the cards, they should pronounce the words.
Afterwards, in pairs they should make a summary of the text: “Canada – Great and Diverse”
using only 10 different pictures in the book as key words, practising their vocabulary and
the new words learned from the Active Floor interactive memory game.

Evaluation

The students had to reflect over the process:
● How was it to play the interactive memory game in order to learn new words and to
enlarge their vocabulary?
● What was it like to make a summary of the text only by looking at the pictures in
the book using the new words?

Student experience, testimonials and quotes

Why is this an optimal learning strategy?

● They have to collaborate as a team.
● They have to be social.
● They have to be active – by jumping around.
● They have to focus in another way than they normally do by using both their feet
and their brain to be able to turn cards and get tricks.
● They have to plan a strategy in order to play the game the best way possible and to
win.
● They laugh and have a good time together.
● It is very motivating for the students – many of them want to be competitive and to
win – and to be capable of doing that – they have to practice all the skills
mentioned and enlarge their vocabulary by learning the words and remembering
them.