PPiSO undergraduates have created a startup project of the game "Portrait of their hometown"
The federal program "Startup as a Diploma" has been operating in Russia since 2019. It serves as an alternative form of a final qualifying work or a master's thesis. Compared to the standard WRC, "Startup as a diploma" offers to test your entrepreneurial competencies in the final work and form a successful business trajectory. The student should understand that in the final he needs to create not just a text in which he will reflect the results of his case study, but a finished product – his own business project.
During the preparation of the WRC as a startup, the student is helped by a supervisor and mentors, they literally teach him to think like an entrepreneur: to study the market, competitors, find possible partners, calculate risks and understand how he will sell his product.
Startup projects can be created by students of different specialties. For example, at the Faculty of Psychological, Pedagogical and Special Education of Saratov University, 2nd year undergraduates - Lilia Sagutdinova, Irina Dvoinina and Ekaterina Saponenko – under the guidance of the head of the Department of Primary Natural and Mathematical Education Elena Morozova and associate professor of the same department Olga Isayeva are working on the project "The strategy game "Portrait of their Hometown".
This project, like other projects created by humanities, will become part of the creative direction in entrepreneurial design.
According to the development team, the Portrait of the Hometown strategy game will allow teachers and students to immerse themselves in the cultural and historical atmosphere of Saratov, get acquainted with the unique features of their native land, and create a collective model (portrait) cities.
"Our project has a game format, as it is the most accessible and effective technology for teaching primary school students. The "Portrait of the Hometown" strategy game, its rules and plot are just designed for children from 7 to 9 years old," said Lilia Sagutdinova.
The game is aimed at the formation of spiritual and moral values and the socialization of elementary school students. It allows you to master a large number of socially significant concepts.
"The player can quickly and effectively master the system of natural science, environmental, socio-cultural concepts that are used in the space of a school, city, village, small Homeland and Russia as a whole. The game will also give the player an understanding of what place the heritage of his native land occupies in the life of a growing personality and her loved ones," Irina Dvoinina explained.
The plot of the game is quite simple and fascinating, allowing you to go beyond the boundaries of perception into the fabulous world of your hometown. In the concept of the game, Ekaterina Saponenko drew parallels between a young man who should go on a "big independent life" and Saratov: "A young "guy – the city of Saratov" lives on planet Earth with his friendly family: mother Economics, father Historian, aunt Nature, sister Ecology and sister Culture. However, soon he needs to determine the value orientations of his life and choose ways of development in accordance with the spiritual and moral preferences of its inhabitants, participants in gaming activities."
The game consists of four stages. On the first of them, players get acquainted with the main characters, guess the objects of their hometown on the game map. On the second stage, they move around the "walking map", expand their ideas about the functional significance of the city's objects and landmarks for its residents.
Already at the third stage, the players are developing their own model – the image of the city of the future. At the same time, self-selected spiritual and moral values are taken into account in the "portrait". For example, "Saratov is a city of labor valor", "city of friendship of peoples", "family traditions", "helper of Russia", "city aspiring into space" and so on. To prevent the participants of the game from getting lost in such a variety, reference cards have been developed.
The finale of the game is the creation of a collective model of the hometown as an object of ecological, economic and socio-cultural purpose. But that's not all. Players must send the results of their creative work to the scientific center of Saratov N.G. Chernyshevsky University. The digital format of the game support at the final stage is provided by Varvara Shevtsova, a 3rd year student of the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology, under the guidance of I.A. Batraeva, Head of the Department of Programming Technologies at the branch of Mirantis IT LLC in Saratov. Then, with the help of students, the guys make up a collective "Portrait of their hometown", describe the directions of development of the city and the region, taking into account the manifested spiritual and moral potential of the younger generation.
The game will also be a good help for teachers. Why? A new tool for teaching local history will appear, the number of hiking and sightseeing routes will increase, and the system of training, retraining and advanced training of personnel in the field of children's and youth local history will be improved. The game "Portrait of the hometown" will be no less useful for parents of students. They will be able to take part in local history events, create parent associations in which they will look for a solution for the spiritual and moral development of their children.
Now the game exists in test mode and, according to E.E. Morozova, testing is taking place on the basis of school No. 60 named after Hero of the Soviet Union P.F. Batavin.
The strategy game "Portrait of the hometown" is a unique project, which has no analogues in Saratov. The project can be implemented in any region of Russia, but taking into account the specifics of this region or region.
Aelita Ponomaryova, photos from the interviewees’ archives
Translated by Lyudmila Yefremova
