Content and Social Games

Overview
For the past fifteen years I have been designing board and card games as a hobby. Though a few have been published and I have enjoyed some success with it, I have only recently been able to explore the blending of that interest with my career in education and technology. This activity was my first big step in that direction and it proved to be a fun, exciting experiment.

In 2005 SimplyFun, a small game publisher from Washington, published my party game Take Your Pick. It is a very simple game that presents two choices to a player (the Subject) and the other players try to predict which of those he or she will choose. The game has done well for them and in 2010 I was asked to create a sequel. I asked my friend and colleague, Melinda Newcombe, to help me create some cards for that game which they released in early 2011.

Melinda teaches the high school Mythology class in the district where I work, so that seemed like an excellent place to try an experiment that combined our Take Your Pick game with content from the classroom. We worked with a group of three girls who remained in her class after the seniors were done in mid-May.

Literacy and Learning Principles
Design Principle
Learning about and coming to appreciate design and design principles is core to the learning experience.

Meta-level thinking about Semiotic Domain Principle
Learning involves active and critical thinking about the relationships of the semiotic domain being learned to other semiotic domains.

Identity Principle (This principle would come into play more in the variations discussed in the Further Explorations section.)
Learning involves taking on and playing with identities in such a a way that the learner has real choices (in developing the virtual identity) and ample opportunity to meditate on the relationship between new identities and old ones. There is a tripartite play of identities as learners relate, and reflect on, their multiple real-world identities, a virtual identity, and a projective identity.

Self-Knowledge Principle
The virtual world (or in our case, the learning enviroment) is constructed in such a way that learners learn not only about the domain but also about themselves and their current and potential capacities.

Classroom Experience
I met with the students for at least some of their class period over the course of three consecutive days. The first day I came in during the last half of class and we played an enjoyable game of Take Your Pick II. Melinda and I talked a little about the process of working on that game. We also provided an introduction for the next day when we would develop cards with items, characters and events drawn from their studies that semester in the Mythology class.

On the second day, I handed out the worksheet found at the end of the attached lesson plan. The girls took about 30 minutes to come up with ideas for the cards. The goal was to come up two options on each card that made for an interesting decision in the game. They were required to have at least two cards with characters, two with items, two with events and two with places. We had the students work independently so that the card content would be a surprise when we played the next day.

This activity could have been done without computer technology, but to incorporate some for this project I had the students enter their card ideas into code for Nandeck softare. This free program can be used to create decks of cards of nearly infinite varieties. I used it to make prototypes for the Take Your Pick games in the past and it was easy to modify the code so that students could add their content. The image at the right shows the cards from the original game and some that students created with the layout generated by the code in Nandeck.

On the third day, students played the game with Melinda. (I didn't feel I was versed enough in the course content to make a meaningful contribution to the game group, but I observed the game.) We added a couple changes to the original game rules.

In the original game, players cannot score further points in a round after they are wrong on a prediction. I removed this penalty for this version because I anticipated that the content would make predictions more difficult.
The Subject player had to explain why she picked the option that she did. If, in explaining this, she was found to have made a mistake about the course content or misunderstood it in some way (by majority vote of the others) she would lose one of her possible 3 points for the round.

They had a lot of fun playing the game. After I left to work with another class, Melinda spoke with them about the activity. The girls were really excited to make more cards that Melinda could use for the class in the future. They spent time in class brainstorming ideas for more cards.

Reflections
All aspects of this activity exceeded my expectations. The students enjoyed it a lot and I was very glad to see their enthusiasm extend beyond the scope of the activity itself. They were excited to contribute to the class by making a game that could be used in future years, but they also asked about the possibility of getting their game published. While I assured them all that is quite a challenge, I was also thrilled that they we did something that inspired such a goal.

Melinda commented that in playing the game with the custom cards that she was able to see how much (and sometimes how little) the students remembered from the course. The students made some comments to this effect as well, so I think it is a fitting review activity at the end of a course.

With the fun we had, the opportunity for creativity and the benefits of reflection upon and review of the course material, I am very excited to explore this project further in other subject areas.

For Further Exploration
In the weeks after trying this activity in class, I explored it more than the other activities in this project. I wanted to look at options for incorporating more technology or other ways to play the game with a class. In all, I came up with three new ways to use the basic idea. I did not get a chance to try any of these with students yet, but I believe they are very workable and I look forward to using them.

Playing with the entire class
First, I evaluated a few online resources that might be used to play the game with an entire class in a computer lab or in a classroom with a laptop for all students.

I started with The Flashcard Machine to make a deck of cards. This game doesn't require a front and back for each card, but the benefit of the website is that it shuffled the custom deck that the user makes so that they can be "drawn" in random order. So, step one for this activity would be for the teacher or a student to create an online deck based on the card content that students created.

Next, I created a simple survey in Survey Monkey. The survey consisted of three questions or "cards" with the generic options of A or B as shown in this screen capture:

The link to the survey could be posted online or on a network drive so that students could easily access it during the game.

When it comes time to play in class, the teacher's computer would be projected so that all students could see it during the game. Each round would go as follows:

Choose a student to be the Subject.
The teacher or the Subject would "draw" three cards using The Flashcard Machine custom deck that was previously created.
The two options from each card (such as "hot" or "cold") would be written or copied and pasted to a Word document or PowerPoint slide so that students could see them listed on the screen.
The Subject would secretly choose and record one of the options from each card. These could be written on paper and kept by the teacher.
Students would then go to the Survey Monkey link provided by the teacher and enter what they think the Subject chose (either A or B) for each card.
When students are done voting, the teacher would reveal the results of the survey using the tools at Survey Monkey. The class could see how well they predicted the responses and the Subject would get some insight as to how the class perceives him or her. Relevant discussion could follow.
Rounds would be repeated with a different Subject each time as appropriate. It is simple to clear the survey results at Survey Monkey, so the same set of generic questions would be used each round.

The Visual Basic version
I relied on my former (limited) programming skills to develop a simple version of the game for Visual Basic. I was not able to make a true multi-player version, but instead I created something that could be enjoyed by two students by passing a laptop or netbook between them as they took on the role of either the Subject or the Guesser each round.

The programs for the basic game and the mythology version are in a zip file attached to this web page This video shows how the program works.

The Android app version
To explore another option, I spent several hours learning to use App Inventor so I could make a version playable on a mobile phone. Like the Visual Basic version, this one requires the students to pass the device back and forth. I did not have time to polish the game as much as I would have liked, but there are possibilities for using an online database to pull the content from. This would allow the teacher or students to create the content for the cards and then the entire class could play using that content. It also provides opportunities to incorporate true multi-player features so two or more players to take part in one game using their own devices.

The two versions I programmed are attached below as app files. This video shows some features of App Inventor and how the app functions.

Besides these variations that I explored to incorporate more technology, here are some other ideas that would enhance this activity:

I would like to see a written assignment at the end of this that requires students to reflect on what they learned about the content, the other students and themselves.
Melinda originally misunderstood my plan to incorporate content into the Take Your Pick game, but what she expected we were going to do may make for an interesting variation for some subjects. She thought we should have students take on the role of a character from mythology when they were the Subject. So, for example, a student would choose options on the cards as if she were Theseus.
Going a step further with the above variation, I would like to lead some discussion where we draw a card created by students and we would pick characters from the content that would choose each option. So, for example, if the card was "Fight in the War or Stay home with family?", which characters would fight in the war? Who would likely stay home with family? It would be good to encourage students to choose characters not directly related to the myth (play, story, historical event, etc.) that the card was based on.
Digital versions of this game or others would be a good assignment for a computer programming or technology class. I am sure that many students would enjoy learning to use a tool like App Inventor to make simple programs for their phones or their friends.

I am waiting for permission from SimplyFun so I can upload the lesson plan for our activity to some sites. Also, I am meeting with some game publishers within the month who make educational games. I plan on sharing this project with them, including the cards that the students made in Mythology class. I expect this valuable activity will be improved upon and expanded in fascinating ways.