Sokikom Math Game: an MMO Education Through Social Interaction

Sokikom math game teaches through social interaction

Educational games have come a long way since The Oregon Trail and Math Blaster.

Sokikom is a MMO math game that aims to help teachers educate their students by using this interactive and math-based online world. After receiving a $2M startup grant funded by The Institute of Educational Sciences as well as former Intel Chairman and CEO Dr. Craig Barrett and Zynga co-founder Steve Schoettler, the game is finally ready to be unveiled to the world and evolve out of beta.

Similar to many MMORPGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) that have many different worlds, regions, and countries, Sokikom has different math regions that each correlate to a different subject in math. Respective countries for Orcs and Humans have now become lands of fractions and geometry. Instead of traveling across a fictional world fighting monsters, students solve math problems with different themes. By having different locations students are encouraged to carve out their own custom education and path, and to want to adventure, play, and learn.

The games are all progressively difficult and each math type begins with a fun tutorial to introduce students to the game. As this game is meant for teachers to assist students from K-12, it seems geared more so towards the younger crowd. It’s possible for people of any age to find amusement when controlling a pirate while doing math.

Educational games are nothing new; many people have learned math and language from retro games or further back. The big deal here in this game is the online, or MMO aspect. Students can choose to play a game individually at their own pace or they can play against the rest of their classmates in real-time to add a sense of fun competition to the activity. Even if it’s all for the sake of addition and subtraction, students are becoming more confident in themselves and may not even realize they’re learning – the most efficient learning games are the ones that never are obvious to the player to be educational.

Times have changed and many schools, colleges, and parents won’t settle for a lecture-based education with a talking head in the front of the classroom anymore. As co-founder Snehal Patel says “You can have content that is personalized at the perfect level for students, but if they aren’t motivated, they aren’t going to care and they’re not going to learn.” Sokikom aims to find the idea balance between enjoyment, progressing difficulty, and visible outcomes.

Parents can also benefit greatly from this. The common question many parents are probably asking is “How is my child doing?” and not only does Sokikom have results — it dishes it out in pie chart form. Teachers can generate behavior reports based off of their evaluation – how much they participated, how they helped others, or even when the child has been disrupting class or getting out of their chair, and so on.

Sokikom and other educational games are making excellent progress in bringing interaction through gaming to schools in effort to boost learning desire and morale. Not only are students becoming more engaged and active with these programs disguised as games, but also teachers are finding new ways to bring knowledge to their students, and the ones learning can work together for a common and enjoyable goal. With education becoming increasingly reliant on technology, the internet, and more interactive processes to engage students, Sokikom is certainly doing it properly and efficiently.

via TechCrunch