- About the project - Pedagogical background - The game - Workshops - Collaboration -
 

Link to the browser-based game (only in Finnish): https://pelaakeksikirjoita.fi/Tarinatalo/index.html

Game guide for the browser-based game teachers(only in Finnish): https://pelaakeksikirjoita.fi/ohjeet/

Suomenkieliselle sivulle tästä

About the project

Children´s and teenagers' reading and writing skills are constantly deteriorating. The purpose of the Tarinatalo (in English House of Stories) project is to offer an interesting solution and create a virtual learning environment where children and young people can develop their reading and writing skills through games.

The goal of the Tarinatalo project is to support children's and young people's writing skills inspired by technology and to create multidisciplinary technology by combining different fields of science, such as Finnish language, education, and information processing sciences, especially Human (Child) Computer Interaction.

This project is a collaborative project between sciences, which combines educational expertise and technological design skills. The University of Lapland focuses on the pedagogical background, the University of Oulu on technological competence and user experience and Oulu University of Applied Sciences on implementation. The project is also a part of Metapilot Factory project co-funded by the European union and council of Oulu region.

See the project timeline here in more detail (updated last in June 2025).

Pedagogical background

The game is implemented according to pedagogical principles. These goals arise from previous research on writing teaching and games and from the pilot games of the Play, invent, and write (Pelaa, keksi ja kirjoita) project. The goal is to implement these principles in the design and coding of the game.

The pedagogical principles

• Supporting community and interaction
• Building agency
• Supporting ideation and narrative (depending on the task and genre) as well as critical literacy
• Utilizing immersion, the allure of games and play, simulation
• Seeking diverse pedagogical usability

The House of Stories games

The game now has two versions, one used on browser and the other on VR-headsets.

Tarinatalo PC

Tarinatalo VR

The first versions of the games are aimed at 8th graders, but the intention is to expand later on the games to other grade levels as well.

Workshops with schools

As an essential part of the project, participatory design workshops were conducted in collaboration with schools, where lower secondary school students participated in game development. A total of 14 workshops were organized during the project, including activities such as:

• Creating background stories for the game through writing and crafting
• Ideating key elements of the game.
• Testing game components and the entire game at various stages of development.
• Evaluating the game

Collaboration

This project brings together collaborators from different fields of science:

• University of Oulu, INTERACT: Participatory design with children, workshops with schools, game design, project management
• University of Oulu, OASIS: Game design and development
• University of Lapland: Pedagogical background
• Oulu University of Applied Sciences (OAMK): Coding, graphical design, game sounds