For children who like to play applications with the computer, for parents who see that the use of technology allows them to learn more things and for families who perform daily household chores in a collaborative and participatory way, the application High Score House is a good option to get all those wishes in a simple and fun way.
Kyle Seaman and Theo Ephraim they are the creators, although not parents, of High Score House, a free video game accessible on the Internet and whose objective is to create a positive interaction at home between family members, encouraging communication between parents and children and teaching that effort has rewards. Among the tasks to be performed are walking the dog, making the bed, brushing teeth or scrubbing the dishes. In addition the tasks are assigned to family members and are given periodicity: daily, weekly or monthly. Older people have to register, support the use of Facebook, and once the account is created, administration tasks can be performed to manage the family.
Apparently they conducted many tests with real families to fine tune an application they already use more than 2,000 families with children and in which almost 300,000 tasks have been completed. The application is designed to children between 6 and 10 years old and their use is enriched with new learning, such as facilitating children to negotiate or participate more in the home.
Each of the family members Earn points when you do your homework and can redeem them later for real-world rewards. This is where the application's business model is, which also has a payment model to customize the family's game scenarios. The method of obtaining a prize for doing a task is still an element that facilitates dialogue at home, negotiation, mental calculation and especially modulates that the child performs the task.
The application is very visual and attractive and is complemented by applications to download to the iPad. In the case of parents, the application can help reduce the stress of getting the children involved in household chores, also provides calendars which helps organize the work and includes recommendations to move forward in the use of the application. And for children, who are always playing and learning at these ages, they are encouraged to be responsible for their actions, they get a benefit in the form of a reward and they are encouraged to get more.
I think the mechanics of the game are very adequate and have been studied and adapted for the greatest number of families. For now it seems that the game is only available in English. The fundamental challenge of this type of games is persistence and especially that it has to be accompanied by tasks performed in the real world. Parents are the ones who evaluate and the kids can see their progress in the application.
