For the ones kids learn economics and have criteria to know what happens in crises, although it is also important to know what happens in growth, can improve your financial knowledge and learn economics concepts, Nintendo With Bankinter they have created a pilot project called Animal Crossing and the economy. The goal is for seven year olds to learn with the video game Animal Crossing: New Leaf.
From the Bank of Spain José María Lamamie, director of the Department of Financial Institutions has explained that education contributes to the stability of the financial system and that having an economic culture provides criteria for making investments. And according to Raquel Azcárraga, Director of Sustainability of BankinterAs soon as economic values are instilled, such as the importance of saving, the value of money and commerce, etc., the generations that come will not only be more prepared to face possible economic crises that may arise in the future, but we can contribute to the construction of fairer and more developed societies. Animal Crossing is used because although it is not an economic game, it allows the development of skills and knowledge related to finance, at least this is what Mario López, a 2nd grade teacher at Las Tablas Valverde School who has participated in the project, explained.
And in this game, the child is the protagonist and responsible for everything that happens during his game. He will be the mayor of his town, and as such, he will decide if he prefers to buy his own house, with a mortgage, if he prefers to pay municipal projects for the good of his people, or invest all his berries, which is the currency used in Animal Crossing, in tools that allow you to earn even more resources. It is his town and the little one will decide how absolutely everything will work: from the clothes he wears, where and how he builds his house, to the bars he inaugurates or the fruit that is marketed.
The students of 2nd Primary school Las Tablas Valverde They recently received a package full of consoles with a game. Bankinter indicated some very basic and minimal guidelines for them to learn to play. From there, the kids have played 20 minutes a day without telling them anything. And from scratch, students, mayors of a town, have had to build and expand their home through the request for loans and the payment of mortgages. To settle these debts they have had to work collecting and selling fruit, where they have learned the value of savings, the law of supply and demand, the principle of scarcity, import and export or what it means to be an entrepreneur.
Pilot project Animal Crossing and the economy, led by Bankinter, work has been done at Las Tablas Valverde School, Santa Isabel-La Asunción in Madrid and it is planned that the students of Los Olmos School, also in the capital of Spain, use it. It is an initiative that is part of the Sustainability Plan Three in a row Bankinter, which focuses on promoting innovation and supporting entrepreneurship in a sustainable and responsible way.
At home we have Animal Crossing for the Wii and the little one practices it while learning. I have asked him, although I have seen him play sometime, and he does say that he has to build things, work, collect berries and modify the city with his work and effort. It seems to me that it is a good initiative to learn by playing very complex and abstract concepts, so we congratulate their promoters and hope that more schools are encouraged to practice this type of initiatives.
