Introduction:
The IGO is a course that use gamification concepts to teach languages.
It is in its beginning stage. For now, it is to teach English to Portuguese speakers.
Goals:
1- Engage and motivate people of all ages to learn while having fun.
2- Give parents and educators a powerful tool to help their children and students to learn, tracking and measuring their progress.
3- Be accessible to anyone, regardless of where they are and what their social class is.
PS: As personal a goal, I am using this project to learn programming alongside my college classes, but I know its potential so this is why I am thinking in the future, and one day I wish to make it my way of living.
IGO as a business:
As a business point of view, the IGO was idealized to be free to the users in its principle and reach most of the people possible, but with the extensive reach it may have, and the really low costs to maintain, many income possibilities may be implemented in the future, like advertisements inside the game or simply donations for example.
Partnerships and Opportunities:
The IGO still a side project to me, because I am pretty limited in time and money. I am a full-time student and I still have a company in Brazil to watch for.
So, I am totally open to partnerships and any other opportunities to unleash the full potential of this project.
You may contact me clicking here or reaching me out in one of my social media that can be found on the top right corner os this website.
History:
The IGO is an idea that came to my mind when I was trying to learn programming and English and to be able to memorize the meaning of the words I created a memory game to match words and images.
PS: The IGO name cames from "Inglês Grátis Online" in Portuguese, which means "online English for free", that was important words to help the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) of the website.
The game was fun to play and then I realize that it may become a great website.
The year was 2012 and the result was the website www.inglesgratisonline.com.br.
First IGO game (2012)
Even with my totally limited knowledge, very slow loading time and very bad quality in general, the website reached a considerable amount of users.
Unfortunately, by the time I had other priorities. I where recently graduated in business administration and working hard in my e-commerce company to pay my bills, so I've almost abandoned this project.
Even without updates, in 2016 the website reached its peak with almost 100 new users a day, but not only the lack of updates, but the rise of new technologies like smartphones and the HTML 5, and more competition, made this first game to become kind of obsolete and then the number of users started descending.
The website was also totally down for a few months because of updates on internet regulations.
Fortunately, the idea never came out of my mind, because I know its potential, and in 2017, I was in another period of my life with more time to dedicate to this project but still with very limited knowledge.
On a trip to the USA, I decided to enroll in a computer science course to get the knowledge to make it happen.
After 3 semesters, I realized that computer science doesn't teach specifically how to create websites and games, then I decided to mix some Multimedia Arts & Technology classes, that will give more specific knowledge to web and game development.
I am writing this text in 2019, and now I'm working on the next version of this game, that you may follow the tests at www.inglesgratisonline.com.br/v2game.php.
Tests for the IGO version 2 (2019)
Future:
For now, it is "only" to teach English to Portuguese speackers. Later on, the idea is not to teach only to Portuguese speackers and not only English, and even not only languages neither.
Game to learn geography!
There is a new market arrising that envolves all other areas of study, and gamification is a new revolution ready to take off.
But I believe that the language course alone can reach an incredible amount of people, become a profitable business and really make the difference in the world. This is why I am focusing only at the English course right now.
Conclusions:
English isn't the most spoken language in the world, but it is the most important, because most of the internet it is in English and other relevant sources of knowledge are in English too.
So, I believe that the IGO project go beyond teach a language, it will help to spread the English to the world, letting people that earstwhile doesn't have access to this very important content, be able to, wherever they are, with just a simple smartphone at their hands.
Everyone should be able to learn!
Please don't hesitate to contact me for any reason.
Let's make the difference!? Let's change the world!?