I’ve been reading Eric Klopfer’s new book “Augmented Learning”.  Its about the use of mobile games in the classroom with the goal of imparting soft skills such as sustained reasoning, collaboration, anticipating change and abstract thinking about information technology.  I’m up to chapter three and so far it is very interesting albeit currently strongly focussed on the U.S. approach to education and educational policy.

What I found … interesting .. or maybe at times frustrating … was the need to defend the word “game” as a blacklisted activity in the classroom.  Apparently schools, some teachers and parents in the USA immediately consider “game” to translate into “ultra violent computer/video game”.  However, games have been used in the classroom for as long as there have been classrooms.  Before computers there were board, card, dice and other forms of games used in the classroom to engage students.

I found the need for Klopfer to define and defend the word “game” quite a drawn out section of chapter one and chapter two.  Though it is obvious from reading this that his research team has had quite a battle getting computer games accepted in the classroom as a viable teaching medium.

I began this post with the intention of giving my own definition of game.  But I’m not sure that is particularly important.  Whether we call them games, simulations, explorations or virtual environments, ultimately our goal is to engage students and provide them with educational opportunities beyond the traditional classroom.  How the term “game” is perceived is just symmantics.  We could debate its definition until we are blue in the face. What matters is how we are using information technology to enhance the teaching and learning experience.  What you call it …. well “Augmented Learning” is a start.

This week I had to teach statistics to my research class. It was a bit of a crash course as I only really had a 1 hour lecture.  Usually statistics would take a dedicated semester or two.  Not to say that I taught them all there was to know, in fact we just covered the basics.

What I did find online was this really nice little statistics game that visualises and demonstrates statistics type concepts.  I myself even found it helpful with my understanding.  If you are interested you can find a copy here (this is the windows version but there is also a Mac version at http://www.economics.pomona.edu/StatSite/Statgame.html).

In my workshop the students had to play through the games and develop an educational card game based on the statistics.  Some interesting, simple and fun games were created in less than an hour.

One team learned about “The Stroop Effect” where colour names and object names are displayed in different colours and the users reaction in identifying which colour the names are displayed in are measured.  For example the word “RED” might appear on the screen written in green.  The user has to click on the green button.  This team created a game based on memory.  They used different coloured cards with the names of colours written on the back.  Some cards had their actual colour and others had a completely different colour. The team shared their game with another team and the situation became quite competitive.  Even when I said the class was over, they didn’t want to leave until the game was finished.   They concluded the game was actually more difficult than ordinary memory because the colours of the cards made things more confusing.

The second team created a very simple game in which they had a pile of cards with numbers on them.  The first upturned card was the “goal mean”.  The players picked up 3 cards in turn and then when through a cycle of picking a card and discarding one out of their hand all the while trying to get the cards in their hand to have a mean of the first card.  When all the cards ran out the person with the closest to the mean was the winner.

The final team’s game was also simple.  Each player had two piles of cards. One pile has the numbers 1-3 on them and the other pile numbers 1-5.  Players took turning up cards, one from each pile.  The first player turned a card up from one of their piles and then the second player turned up their first card.  Then the first player again and then the second player.  The player with the highest sum of the numbers on their two cards wins the round.  They players can select from any of their piles.  The idea is that one pile has bigger numbers in it but also a bigger range of numbers.  So it becomes a probability and card counting exercise.

All teams taught their games to other teams.

Games students can have fun without fancy graphics and high end consoles.