No one could accuse Digital Native Academy of lacking ambition in its efforts to promote serious gaming – the business is attempting to use 3D technology to teach the fundamental laws of physics to children.
The Walsall-based businesses is working on technology called Kliper, which teaches issues such as gravity, inertia, mass and collision dynamics to pupils from primary to secondary level, in an interactive way.
Director Geoff Henderson said: “We’ve been working closely with Professor Bob Stone of the University of Birmingham to show that serious gaming techniques have a role to play in education and training.
“Much of what we do is based around showing how important and powerful a tool serious gaming can be in so many different aspects of life, that it has a major contribution in the real world.”
Digital Native Academy, which was set up in 2006, has not only used its serious gaming technology in the world of physics, but in the physical world.
Starting out with a small scale test project, it has developed an expertise in planning and urban deign, with systems that allow people to experiment and interact with 3D models to suggest what their surroundings might look like.
In fact its work in this field has been so impressive that the company was in 2008 given an Innovation Award by the Ordnance Survey for the unique ways in which it used the OS’s data.
Geoff adds: “Our core philosophy is convince people of the merits of serious gaming.”
For more information on the Digital Native Academy, visit www.digitalnativeacademy.com.