WWF Global Challenge
Join the WWF’s Global Challenge for 2023!
Charlotte Bouchier has news of this year’s WWF competition that enables students to explore the wonderful world of birds this October.
What is the WWF Global Challenge?
In 2021 and 2022, the online educational resources provider ITZA, in partnership with WWF launched the WWF Global Challenge, a free competition for schools. Over 24,000 students have taken part across 85 countries.
Each Challenge has a different theme. In 2022 the focus was big cats. The Challenge this year focuses on birds, a dynamic and wide-ranging topic that will be sure to spark your students’ interest and inspire a natural curiosity in learning about the world around them.
From 7th to 13th October 2023, students from all over the world can earn points by completing fun online learning tasks all about birds – from their superpowers to the physics of flight.
The learning journeys use dramatic content from WWF, BBC, and Netflix, accompanied by quizzes, interactive maps, videos, live leaderboards, and a range of exciting rewards for individuals and schools!
Content
With at least 10 minutes of new learning content available each day and quizzes to test their understanding, students will dive into the world of birds, discovering their incredible survival strategies, and the vital role they play in our ecosystems.
Learners are able to explore content independently on a platform designed just for them. They will determine their own learning pathways, explore interactive content, and test what they’ve learned in fun quizzes.
Gamification
Gamification is the process of applying concepts from gaming to the process of teaching and learning to better engage students. The “challenge-based” model is particularly effective, with a study by ScienceDirect suggesting that performance was increased by up to 89.45% when gamified concepts were blended with traditional learning.
This means better retention of information, inspiring a fulfilling, lifelong love of self-directed learning and higher exam results.
The WWF Global Challenge gamifies learning in a number of ways:
- Content is interactive, high quality and fun.
- ITZA’s ‘digital currency’ rewards effective self-directed learning and which students can spend on WWF conservation initiatives, sustainably-made products and online vouchers and experiences.
- Leaderboards allow students to track their progress against schools all over the world. In 2022, over 24,000 students from 85 countries went head to head (or this year, beak to beak).
- There are prizes for schools and individuals, inspiring a sense of teamwork that will spur learners on to be the best in the nest.
Fun for students, easy for teachers
The challenge is designed to boost natural curiosity in the environment in a way that is easy for teachers to set-up and oversee. The Challenge can be set as a project, for work in class or at home. Students explore high-quality resources independently, and group sessions can be organised in form time, PSHE, Science, Geography or Eco club sessions where discussions can take place about what students are learning.
You can hear more about how teachers use an ITZA school challenge with their students here.
Teachers reported that the 2022 WWF Global Challenge on Big Cat species and Tracking Tigers helped students to feel inspired, to take action and to become informed Global Citizens.
One parent commented:
“This is a great initiative to get children involved and learning more about the world around them, the information provided on the website is informative and the competition is a great incentive to get the children involved.”
As one student said:
“I enjoyed playing on ITZA because it encouraged me to learn about animals . . . there is a lot of competitiveness but it’s also just really enjoyable. The quizzes are super fun and the videos are extremely interesting too.”
Teachers were equally enthusiastic:
“We used our morning work slots as well as end of session times to do the challenge. Students most enjoyed the competition element, particularly as they could track this on the leaderboard and the quizzes. I was pleased the challenge encouraged them to learn and find out about things independently. The Challenge also made it quicker for them to learn about this important issue without searching for resources and age appropriate information myself.”
How to get involved in 2023
- Teachers can sign up their school on the Teacher Portal here. They will receive a school code which they can pass to their students – there is no upper limit to the number of students who can play per school. Encouraging other classes in your school to join with your school code can boost your school’s chance of winning exciting prizes.
- Students then sign up when the challenge starts from 7th October on the Challenge website here with their school code and choose an anonymised display name for themselves which appears on their school leaderboards. If they are under 13 they will be asked to provide a parent or guardian’s email, you may choose to ask them to provide their teacher email here. See instructions here on how students can register.
- Entry is free to all schools and content is in English only.
Dates
The Challenge starts on the 7th October with at least 10 minutes of daily new content and a quiz for children to explore in their own time and at their own pace. This can be at home or at school – earning points as they go, which show on the individual, national and international Leaderboards. On 13th October, challenge points are added up and top national schools qualify for the International Final in December, organised by WWF India to decide the overall winning school!
Data shows Gen Z are statistically most worried about the environment. Joining the WWF Global Challenge 2023 on ITZA is the first step to empowering your students to take action.
Charlotte Bouchier is ITZA’s Head of Engagement.
An independent company, based in London, ITZA is a team of content creators, film-makers, technologists, cognitive and data scientists and academics.
You can follow ITZA on Facebook
FEATURE and SUPPORT IMAGES with kind permission from ITZA
