Children and their fondness for Kaju!

With 50+ schools using our modules, thousands of children across India have made our baby alien, kaju their play-pal and friend!

Kaju was introduced to the world in December 2012, when our first module was tested with a small class of excited students at Ahlcon International School, New Delhi. By now, we have gathered hundreds of stories about how students from our partner schools enjoy learning through our modules and want to jump, hop and clap with Kaju everyday. We wanted to share some of these wonderful stories with the readers of our blog, so here goes!

This one is by our cofounder, Kartik. We saw this at the R.N Podar School in Mumbai.

Unintended Magic

Before we build our games, we test the game logic out using the keyboard/mouse (before adding the Kinect based gesture-recognition). In some games we decided to leave those controls in the final version as well.

This story takes place in Mumbai, where we have twin-sisters studying in the same class. Unfortunately, one of them couldn’t completely use her legs and relied on assistive-crutches for actual mobility.

When she saw her sister playing the Number Line Game (where she helped Kaju jump along the number line), she expressed desire to play the same. Now, there was no way she could jump high enough for the Kinect to realise she was trying to jump. But when she set down her crutches and twisted on the spot, the teacher in the room decided to press the key to make Kaju jump.

The girl was ecstatic after seeing Kaju jump on the screen and realising what she had just done. She then continued to turn around on the spot, while the teacher helped her through, and solve the game. She was amazed by the magical feeling that this little piece of technology (or this little tweak unknown to her) could provide.

We absolutely love it when these kindergarteners feel happy and accomplished while using our modules. Working towards developing new modules and reaching out to the millions of students in the world seems more meaningful. The joy that we see in the eyes of these young friends of Kaju makes us feel even more motivated. It makes us want to place our movement-based modules in many more classrooms across the world!

Join us in our endevour of getting Kaju to a school near you by emailing us at homework (at) nayidishastudios (dot) com .