Sheffield-born shining star company Twinkl visits Year 6

Twinkl, a company which is home to thousands of teacher-created resources and assessment materials on its online platform, brought their latest AR projects and cutting-edge technology to the Junior School yesterday for an exclusive chance for Sheffield Girls' Year 6 to test them out.

Twinkl is currently in the process of developing pioneering programs using Augmented Reality, which encourages pupils to design, build and program robots inspired by the real-life robots exploring Mars. Augmented Reality, as defined by Twinkl’s website, is, “an interactive experience where technology is used to place a computer-generated image into the real world. The technology uses the camera on your device to augment video, sound and graphics and then inputs them onto real-world objects.”

The girls had a glimpse into the potential future of educational resources with the team by exploring Twinkl’s new 'top secret' project. Some of their existing AR games include ‘Little Red Coding Club’, designed to teach children to code in a fun and engaging way and known as the first ever multiplayer AR game, and ARchitect, where children can build anything they can think of in a game with realistic physics. Both apps can be downloaded for free from the iTunes app store.

Scarlett said, “I thought it was really fun because you could really use your imagination and create different things.  It was really fun getting to the end in different ways – you had to be positive and show resilience.”

“It was a very imaginative game with most of the other games doing the design for you but this was making you use your creativity and challenged you from the beginning,” said Emily. “It was fun looking into the different ways of getting around the course.  The only limit to this game was the limits of your imagination. It was great to experience the learning rather than just hearing about it from a teacher.”

Twinkl is a leading educational resource publisher with more than 500,000 quality classroom resources available to teachers nationwide, and their materials are a staple part of the curriculum taught at Sheffield Girls’ Junior School and across the UK. In 2018 the company received royal recognition after winning the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in International Trade, and its rapidly growing success is only set to continue.