Our long-standing partner Yrityskylä
Yrityskylä is a learning concept focused on society, economics, working life and entrepreneurship for sixth and ninth grade students. Awarded as the world’s best educational innovation, Yrityskylä was developed in Finland and reaches more than 70 000 pupils during the school year.
MeKiwi has been the ongoing developer of the educational solutions for Yrityskylä and the creator of the new games since February 2018.
MeKiwi has carried out the visual design, implementation and folding of the Yrityskylä Alakoulu task book and the visual design and technical implementation of the following digital solutions: the Yrityskylä Yläkoulu mobile app, the teachers’ portal and the Yrityskylä Alakoulu small business 3D ordering system.
Primary school textbook
The 40-page printed exercise book for sixth-graders features four funny characters. The book’s characters and thematic illustrations were created by Juho from MeKiwi. Various visual elements and contents were folded into a ready-to-print product. The end result is a clear and colourful activity book that is fun for students to immerse themselves in. The primary school learning material has been praised by the development organisation for multiculturalism/global education in textbooks. According to them, global education issues were exceptionally well integrated from the start, including in the illustrations.
An app for secondary school students
The students app offers digital activities for secondary school pupils, such as fun mini-games. The design took particular account of mobile use. The app is currently used in secondary schools all over Finland.
Teachers’ portal
The teachers’ portal is a teacher-specific interactive website. On their own website, teachers can access all information related to the Yrityskylä learning concept and manage the progress of their classroom students. The portal is used by 4000 teachers in Finland, who manage the progress of over 70 000 of their students through the portal. The portal is integrated with the Yrityskylä Yläkoulu mobile app and the Yrityskylä Alakoulu game.
Small business 3D ordering system
The Small business 3D ordering system is a system built for Yrityskylä’s partner businesses to design and order their own physical premises for the Yrityskylä Alakoulu learning environment where children work.
Partner company
Through our partnership, we have become part of the unique educational innovation of Yrityskylä and have experienced the students’ genuine engagement in a complete learning experience. One part of our partnership consists of MeKiwi’s own Yrityskylä Alakoulu mini company in the Northern Ostrobothnia learning environment. In the 2018-2019 school year, the MeKiwi Virtual Reality game has been one of the highlights according to the children’s feedback.
Development of the primary school game
In the Yrityskylä Alakoulu’s learning environment, schoolchildren work in the mini society of the day. The activities of the physical learning environment are controlled and managed through the Alakoulu digital game system. MeKiwi has developed an online banking solution, a news tool and a quiz tool for surveys.
Controlled Chaos
With the support of the Saastamoinen Foundation, in Yrityskylä you can now play a VR game that feeds creativity. Controlled Chaos is an audiovisual experience for sixth-grade children. Using the VR glasses technology and their own movement, they can experience and create their own unique media artwork. During development, we paid special attention to the children’s highly varied technical skills and Finnish as a second language status. As a result, the game can be used by anyone, regardless of language and background.
Jonna Ranta
Our cooperation with Yrityskylä started in spring 2018 with the construction of the teachers’ portal, the development of new learning material for sixth- and ninth- graders and the further development of the existing game systems. The cooperation has been very rewarding and educational for us as we have been able to develop digital teaching materials and games, as well as a physical textbook, based on Yrityskylä’s strong pedagogical expertise. We have also enjoyed our partnership in the Yrityskylä Northern Ostrobothnia learning environment, where children in our mini-company have been able to design the visual appearance of websites and apps for other mini-companies.
The joy we witnessed in the miniature society on the village day is the best feedback an educational game developer can get.