Digital games to teach te reo

A group of Huntly lads are developing digital tools for millennials to learn te reo Ma¯ ori.

The business, myReo, is creating a series of bilingual digital games and software targeted at school-aged students but accessible to everyone.

Subject matters include math, history, mythology, programming, data sorting and artificial intelligence.

‘‘We are just a group of boys wanting to learn our language,’’ founder and software developer Kawana Wallace said.

‘‘We want to make games and then give those games out to the community so others can learn too.’’

Wallace has spent the past six years working in tech education. It was through this, he noticed a lack of te reo resources for kids.

‘‘I know, I try and download games for my kids and there’s only a handful of quality resources and coding games out there.

‘‘I want to create more and take bilingual games mainstream.’’

The business started last year, but has taken off in the past three months, Wallace said.

The myReo team has been selected for a four-month accelerator programme called Kōkiri, along with nine other start-ups. Kō kiri is dedicated to speeding up the development of fledgling Māori businesses.

Participants receive education, funding, mentoring, networking opportunities and engagement with leading business figures during the course of the programme, which runs until June.

‘‘Lots of people have great ideas, but commercialising those ideas and getting them to market is the difficult part,’’ start-up manager Elena Higgison said.

The programme is based at Te Wā nanga o Aotearoa’s Mangakōtukutuku campus in Hamilton and is a result of a collaboration between Callaghan Innovation, Te Wā nanga o Aotearoa, Creative HQ, Robett Hollis, Crowe Horwath and Ernst & Young Tahi.