Ypulse Youth Website Profile: SmartyCard
Posted by anastasia on 03-04-2009
I had the pleasure of visiting the folks at SmartyCard the other week — now that the site is officially live, I figured I would blog it as part of our new Youth Website Profile series.
What it is… According to their own description, "SmartyCard is the world's first learn, earn and play experience to provide real, online and virtual rewards to the tens-of-millions of families that believe learning at home can be fun and rewarding." Translation: Giving kids/tweens an incentive to play educational games by offering the potential to earn cool stuff that parents pre-pay for.
Who it's for…. Right now the games on the site are for kids in grades 3-6 while the card is being targeted to parents. It's like a pre-paid debit card that kids can use to redeem prizes from games to Club Penguin subscriptions. The more games they play, the more stuff they can get (as long as parent keep filling up the card).
What works for us…. I love the bright colorful characters on the site, they succeed by being kid friendly without being too babyish. We know that incentives work, and SmartyCard has done a great job at signing up partners with stuff kids want. The questions are multiple choice, sort of "Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader" style and surrounded by lots of fun animation.
The challenge… SmartyCard is still sort of like homework and the multiple choice format might feel like a game show but it can also end up feeling like educational software. With so many virtual worlds and video games for this age group to play outside of school, it might really take some prodding (and the SmartyCard rewards) to get kids to want to sit down and work on math problems (even if they are surrounded by cartoons). The folks behind SmartyCard assured me they are working on developing some very cool non-multiple choice games, and with the GM hailing from Lucas/StarWars.com, I have no doubt they will. Still, this is a product aimed at parents who are invested in their kids' education/academic performance and who have no issue with a spoonful of consumer sugar to help the medicine go down. While all kids can play the games without SmartyCards, it definitely draws a line between kids whose parents will pay and those who won't…or can't.
For more coverage of the tween space, check out the Ypulse Tweens Channel, sponsored by the Tween Tribune.
Categorized under: Tweens, Web
March 4th, 2009 at 12:59 pm
A story in the New York Times yesterday looked at programs where learning well is rewarded with "stuff". Much as we'd all love to believe that kids learn for the sake of learning, data may indicate otherwise.
Above is a link to some thoughts on SmartyCard. Enjoy –Robin
March 4th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
This creeps me out. PLEASE don't fall for the vague "data indicates" wave of the hand. There are plenty of books by learned folk (Camerer, Brafman Bros., Ariely, Berns, Buckingham, and Robinson to name a few) that refute the benefits of extrinsic motivations as a long term solution to learning. SmartyCard is nothing more than creative positioning by a gaming company, pure and simple. It does a disservice to every parent by reinforcing that learning is rewarded by prizes like a parking lot carnival. It fails to developing creative, critical thinking in confident, intrinsically-motivated children.
March 12th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
Peter,
While your point of view is noble and without rebuttal, it is also quite idealistic. We live in a world of rewards, whether it be salary/bonus for work or Nobel prizes and certificates from the educational establishment. Please be realistic that ANY way we can get children to engage in learning is worth trying and certainly something they will be challenged with on a daily basis throughout their lives.
April 2nd, 2009 at 11:26 am
Hi Todd,
I don't think we have the luxury of striving for anything less than the ideal. Of course it's going to be a long, bumpy road in pursuit of the horizon. But to encourage a tip-jar mentality as extrinsic motivation is inexcusably shortsighted. Please, at the least, read Alfie Kohn's Unconditional Parenting or Punished by Rewards, Sir Ken Robinson's Out of our Minds, or Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers then consider how ridiculous and unrealistic the SmartyCard solution is.
September 23rd, 2009 at 11:48 pm
[...] to pick up the tab, Dizzywood's now one of the virtual worlds kids can access through the 'learn to earn' homework helper and quiz platform of SmartyCard (which I wrote about here and here) using grade leveled quizzes to [...]