Polly (9) attended a lecture about gaming

What are all these primary school pupils doing scampering around campus? Actually, they’re being taught by researchers in the context of Erasmus Junior College, organised by the Science Education Hub. Last Tuesday, 9-year-old Polly attended a lecture about how games can be used to make the world a better place. We asked her to write a report.

Hello, my name is Polly Wijers, I’m 9 and I’m from the Tarcisiusschool in Rotterdam.

On Tuesday 9 October, they chose me together with a few children from my class to go to Erasmus University. They picked us up with a bus. When we got out, I saw all these art works: a kind of upside-down water drop and a statue of Erasmus.

After that we passed a whole bunch of bikes and went through a revolving door. We ended up in a big hall. Then we had to take two stairs and entered an even bigger hall with art works made of glass. A student came over and she took us to this big room with all these chairs and folding tables. It also had big windows that they covered with a black screen so you could see the PowerPoint presentation better.

And then Professor Robert Dur came in, with a lady. They were both wearing a toga and a black hat, and the lady was also carrying a stick with bells on it. The Professor told us what we would be doing that afternoon. After that, Professor Jeroen Jansz gave us a lesson about how you can use games to make the world a better place. First, they asked us to answer questions on our phone or tablet (if you had brought it along) about which games we play and how often. And it showed you straight away how many percent of the kids play games. The university had made three games. For example, there was one about children who have to pick cotton, which is really boring to do. If you were playing this, and you pressed ‘quit’, a message popped up saying that you could choose to stop, but that those kids have to keep picking!

After the lesson was over, we had to wait for the bus, so we played hide-and-seek for a bit.

I thought the lecture about gaming was interesting, but it was difficult to understand sometimes, because now and then they used grown-up language. And you had to sit still for a long time. I’m really curious about what we’ll be doing next time round!