News
Insights from the first testing of analog Zahlandia in schools
22-12-2025
As part of the first classroom playtesting sessions of the analog paper-based games developed within *Project Zahlandia*, teachers had the opportunity to observe students’ reactions, engagement and learning processes while participating in the activities. During this session, students played *Zamo Chess*, one of the educational analog games designed to support mathematical learning through game-based methodologies.
The level of student involvement was remarkably high from the very beginning. After the initial explanation of the rules and game dynamics, students actively asked questions about how the game would be carried out, demonstrating curiosity, enthusiasm, and a strong willingness to participate. Throughout the activity, they remained attentive, motivated, and cognitively engaged.
Overall, students responded very positively to the experience. They expressed that they enjoyed the game and showed great motivation during the session. In fact, when the activity time ended, many students wanted to continue playing, highlighting the game’s capacity to maintain interest and active participation.
The gameplay mainly supported the practice and reinforcement of mathematical operations already familiar to the students.
No significant problems or difficulties arose during the session. The activity was carried out smoothly, and students adapted well to the proposed dynamics.
Based on this first experience, teachers expressed a clear willingness to continue using these kinds of educational games in future lessons. They highlighted that game-based methodologies encourage active and participatory learning while fostering competency development in a highly motivating environment for students.
More information and regular updates about Zahlandia can be found here:
Zahlandia Website
From Analogue Game to Learning App: Zahlandia Kick-Off in Dortmund
16-10-2025
In October 2025, the time had finally come: project partners from Spain, Croatia, Bulgaria, Portugal and Germany met at the Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts for their first meeting.
Over the next two and a half years, the project team will develop, test and evaluate a game-based digital learning environment for playful mathematics training as part of the Erasmus+ project. The analogue game “Zahlandia”, originally developed by Timo Storz for use in schools, will be transformed into a digital app and expanded so that children can also play Zahlandia at home. The target group is primary school children; through the app, they can practice important mathematical skills in a playful way also at home.
The main aim of the kick-off meeting was to get to know each other as a project team: as this European team will mainly work remotely to use resources as efficiently as possible, it was particularly important to meet in person at the start. In the inspiring atmosphere of the Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts, the different team members introduced themselves. The new Zahlandia team is interdisciplinary and brings together expertise from schools, game development and game design, game-based learning and media education. For such a large and diverse team, it was crucial to agree on a shared vision for the digital version of Zahlandia in order to facilitate collaboration moving forward.
Communication and transparency are key pillars for the Zahlandia project group. Therefore, the team used the kick-off meeting to develop a workflow and a transparent timeline, ensuring that collaboration between the various institutions and people across different countries can run in a well-structured way.
In addition to the kick-off meeting in Germany, three further face-to-face meetings will take place in the partner countries. The kick-off in Dortmund was just the beginning – the project team is now fully committed to developing Zahlandia step by step into an innovative learning app that enables children all over Europe to learn mathematics through play.
You can find more information and regular updates about Zahlandia here:
Zahlandia Website
Keynote at VIA Research Days
08-09-2025
Today, we held a keynote at VIA Research Days in Viborg, Denmark. We talked about the current paths of Virtual Reality with additional focus on Virtual Reality in education. Based on our experience in the ViReTrain project we gave insights on how healthcare can be translated into software solutions that make a difference in educational practice. To be precise, we highlighted challenges that come up when researchers, educators and developers come together with their different perspectives and gave solutions to come to great results combining their expertise. In the end we shared thoughts on what the future may bring for XR learning environments. We thank VIA very much for the fun opportunity and the event!
VR-Intense: Avatars
01-08-2025
We have finished the first avatar variations for the player avatars in the classroom tool of our virtual reality project. We are looking forward to see players customise their own avatars in the next tests of the framework!