Pixelate – a 28 y.o Swedish guy has posted a series of 4 really interesting Flash based games on the Kongregate web site that explain the underlying concepts behind games. They are called Understanding Games and are an interesting mixture of multimedia presentation with gameplay aspects that really are well worth checking out.

Some of the core elements covered in the first game are:

• Rules define the possible actions of the players
• Rules apply to all players and have to be made clear and intelligible to them
• Rules are fixed and you cannot change them to your own advantage
• No game can be played without the interaction of the player
• The outcome of the game has to be uncertain otherwise it loses it’s appeal
• The way that game elements are represented (i.e realistic vs abstract) influences the way we think they should act
• A more realistic looking game (e.g Rockstar Table Tennis vs Pong) should allow for more realistic play

The main points of the game are summarised at the end and are all well worth considering when thinking about using games.

While we’re looking at Croquet here for our work in virtual worlds in learning, there is a lot happening in education in Second Life that is worth investigating. Earlier this year an extensive conference was held there called Best Practices in Education and thanks to the kind folk at the Second Life Cable Network, you can see the better part of 12 hours worth of conference talks given by educators on the virtual world education cutting edge.

Some of the topics covered include:

• An observational survey of educational institutions in the virtual world of Second Life
• Student engagement in  Second Life
• Two Years of Introducing Educators to Second Life in 60 Minutes, or: Tips for Dinosaur Wrangling
• Fostering meaningful and productive relationships in a virtual reality environment
• Creating a community of practice and searchable database of learning objects in Second Life – The SaLamander Project
• Drawing on Second Life Experiences to Enrich the First Life

The Tips for Dinosaur Wrangling talk looks particularly interesting here as a starting point as getting institutional support to get these things set up (and past the firewall/security issues) is currently our first and biggest hurdle.

Blogging can be a very useful tool in the classroom for getting learners to express themselves, share ideas, offer each other feedback and reflect on their experiences.

Subjects where learners keep a work-journal of some description (while working on a major project for example) can find blogs particularly valuable – not least because the date-stamping of posts discourages learners from whipping up 12 weeks worth of project reflection on the morning that it falls due.

What happens though when your learners aren’t that tech savvy? How do you get the underlying principles of what blogging is and why you do it when it takes half the session to get everyone online in the first place?

Easy – do it all on paper.

This activity (which has a number of game-like elements even if it isn’t strictly a game) was devised by the Flexible Learning Solutions (FLS) team at the Canberra Institute of Technology and it offers an enjoyable, low-tech introduction to blogging.

Leonard Low from the FLS team explains it in detail on his highly regarded Mobile Learning blog here.

A great part is that instead of a whole computer lab, all you need is:

Materials:

• A5 sheets of Paper – one per participant, and preferably in many colours
• Writing implements – lots of colours of ballpoint pens and/or colourful textas
• Post-It Notes – I use 47.6 x 73mm ones. If you can find some colourful ones around this size, so much the better.

(image from frozenchipmunk on Flickr)

BECTA (n.d), Computer games in education project: report Retrieved May 30th, 2007 from BECTA website : http://partners.becta.org.uk/index.php?section=rh

Becta is an agency of the British Government with responsibility for providing advice on the use of information and communications technology (ICT) in education. This report offers an overview of the potential uses of computer games to support teaching and learning in schools.

The games chosen (and their purposes) were:

• The Sims (building a simple model, describe how rules govern models)
• SimCity 3000 (building a simple model, describe how rules govern models)
• Championship Manager 2000/01 (databases and data manipulation)
• Age of Empires (thinking and essential skills)
• City Trader (trading of stocks and shares in business, modelling economic activity)

As a small pilot study, no particularly definitive data has come from this report however it is worth examining for the insights developed by the teachers and the learners in the process of introducing games into the classroom. These include:

• Simulation based games can be very useful for stimulating class discussions by providing authentic contexts
• Teachers need to frame the activity to ensure that learning objectives can be met.
• Teachers should be familiar with a game – both in terms of content and control before using it in class.
• The immediate feedback offered in games acts as a strong motivator for learners
• Games can offer activities with greater relevance to learner interests – such as football in the case of Championship Manager
• Games can act as “platforms for social interaction”(p.5) and stimulate collaboration
• The option for licensing games to use on a school network was considered important, given the limitations of running games on a single computer.

The Game Learner is all about using games in education – not just electronic ones (although these will definitely feature) but pretty well any kind of engaging activity that has at least some of the elements that make up a game.

I’ll get into what makes a game in more depth shortly but for now, some of the key elements of a game (according to Marc Prensky) are that:

1. Games are a form of fun. Giving us enjoyment and pleasure.
2. Games are a form of play. Giving us intense and passionate involvement.
3. Games have rules. Giving us structure.
4. Games have goals. Giving us motivation.
5. Games are interactive. Giving us doing.
6. Games are adaptive. Giving us flow.
7. Games have outcomes and feedback. Giving us learning.
8. Games have win states. Giving us ego gratification.
9. Games have conflict/competition/challenge. Giving us adrenaline.
10. Games have problem solving. Sparking our creativity.
11. Games have interaction. Giving us social groups.
12. Games have representation and story. Giving us emotion.

(from Marc Prensky’s writings )

For me, the three key elements, which you will generally find in any sort of game, from tic-tac-toe to Halo 3 are:

Rules – make things fair by forcing everyone to take specific paths to reach goals

Goals – the things you measure yourself against – we conceive a future state and devise strategies to achieve it.

Outcome/feedback – the game changes in response to what we do, gives us information related to our activities

I’ve had an interest in gaming since my parents brought home a basic Pong style game console in the late 1970s – as a young fella I was fascinated by it and it was much to my chagrin that they didn’t embrace the Atari revolution that followed not long after. (Or any of the following games systems for that matter – it wasn’t until I was well out of home in the mid 90’s that I was able to get a Sega MegaDrive and pick up where I’d left off – aside from the odd visit or 10 to the game arcades and friend’s houses that kept me going

Working as an educational multimedia designer/developer (I should really figure out that title one day) for the last few years – and studying for my Masters in Education (I.C.T in Education) has opened my eyes to some of the potential of games in teaching and learning. Given the emergence of gaming in general and the way the internet and the social web are reshaping the nature of knowledge and information in the 21st century, this seems like a good area to be focussing on.

I have a few game based design projects on the boil that I’ll talk about from time to time, there’s plenty of interesting other bloggers out there doing great work in this area (Karl Kapp and Jenny Weight to name but two) and plenty of research going on all the time – not to mention new games being released pretty well daily. I’ve also already done some writing on games in education for my aforementioned study which I’ll recycle tap into so new material (hopefully) won’t be too hard to come by.

And of course, links, contributions, ideas, feedback and so on are always most welcome.

cheers for now then

Col