Pilot Project Parkopolis

Part of the global Learning Landscapes initiative, Project Parkopolis is among the big ideas reimagining cities as extraordinary learning opportunities for the breadth of skills children need in the 21st century.

Building on years of research from the science of learning, Parkopolis reimagines ordinary public places as accessible and affordable opportunities for learning in the 21st century through evidence-based activities that facilitate interactions and engagement between children and their parents, educators and communities.

Imagine a life-size board game that supports children practice difficult mathematical topics such as fractions with a reinvented dice that prompts them to move from space 5 to space 81⁄4. Or a game that challenges them, their families and friends to solve a problem in scientific reasoning or to play hopscotch on a specially engineered area that fuels the executive function skills of attention, memory and flexibility. These are just a few

of the activities embedded in the familiar set-up of a classical board game that researchers from the science of learning have designed to be fun and engaging, while also being deeply purposeful.

We created and launched the first prototype of Project Parkopolis in August 2017 in Switzerland during 10 summer camps for robotics, coding and entrepreneurship at EPFL Lausanne, at the Innovation Park Dübendorf and the Loreto School in Zug. 

Contributors: Research Team, Learning sciences: Dr. Kathy Hirsch- Pasek, Dr. Andres Bustamante, Cristina Riesen: Swiss Prototype Design and Production, Workshop Facilitation.