From Analogue Game to Learning App: Zahlandia Kick-Off in Dortmund

From Analogue Game to Learning App: Zahlandia Kick-Off in Dortmund

In October 2025, the time had finally come: project partners from Spain, Croatia, Bulgaria, Portugal and Germany met at the Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts for their first meeting.

Over the next two and a half years, the project team will develop, test and evaluate a game-based digital learning environment for playful mathematics training as part of the Erasmus+ project. The analogue game “Zahlandia”, originally developed by Timo Storz for use in schools, will be transformed into a digital app and expanded so that children can also play Zahlandia at home. The target group is primary school children; through the app, they can practice important mathematical skills in a playful way also at home.

The main aim of the kick-off meeting was to get to know each other as a project team: as this European team will mainly work remotely to use resources as efficiently as possible, it was particularly important to meet in person at the start. In the inspiring atmosphere of the Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts, the different team members introduced themselves. The new Zahlandia team is interdisciplinary and brings together expertise from schools, game development and game design, game-based learning and media education. For such a large and diverse team, it was crucial to agree on a shared vision for the digital version of Zahlandia in order to facilitate collaboration moving forward.

Communication and transparency are key pillars for the Zahlandia project group. Therefore, the team used the kick-off meeting to develop a workflow and a transparent timeline, ensuring that collaboration between the various institutions and people across different countries can run in a well-structured way.

In addition to the kick-off meeting in Germany, three further face-to-face meetings will take place in the partner countries. The kick-off in Dortmund was just the beginning – the project team is now fully committed to developing Zahlandia step by step into an innovative learning app that enables children all over Europe to learn mathematics through play.