Maria Skiadelli ICT and Informatics Teacher

Constructionism 2012Athens, 22/8/2012

*Interactive Board Games in classroom

*What is a board game?

A board game is a game that involves counters or pieces moved or placed on a pre-marked surface or "board", according to a set of rules. Games can be based on pure strategy, chance (e.g. rolling dice) or a mixture of the two, and usually have a goal which a player aims to achieve.*Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_game

* Interactive Board games (IB games)

Board Games that are implemented as software products and can be played on a computer.A special category of computer gamesCompared with other computer game categories they offer:*Simple rules while playing*Easiness of implementation*Face to face interaction between humans *Enhance strategic skills and logic instead of

reflex

*The constructionism

approach

*Y. Kafai in her article “Playing and Making Games for Learning” says:

“Rather than embedding “lessons” directly in games, constructionists have focused their efforts on providing students with greater opportunities to construct their own games—and to construct new relationships with knowledge in the process”.

*Remember Seymour Papert‘s popular saying: “…learning …happens especially felicitously in a context where the learner is consciously engaged in constructing a public entity.”

*IB games in the informatics curriculum

*One has to find meaningful activities that are easy to be implemented by the young and/or novice learners in short time. *Kids get easily frustrated if they don’t get tangible

results. Their patience is running out very fast.*Computer games are difficult to implement; they

need a lot of effort, time and programming experience of a superior level. *So one has to find activities that are fun, playful

and rewarding.

* Why building the game programmatically?

*The dynamic nature of the game is enhanced*Either the rules can change or the board can

change or both.*Various playing situations may occur by just

changing a few parameters *“Game-making activities offer an entry point for

young gamers into the digital culture not just as consumers but also as producers ” (Kafai Y., 2001)

*Why use the LOGO language?

LOGO offers certain advantages both for implementing and for playing *It is interpreted, that means that a game is not only

built programmatically, but can be also played programmatically*For a player moving a piece on the board is achieved

by giving the right moving instructions to a turtle*It has the inherent advantage of drawing lines as

traces left by the turtles while moving. That makes quite simple and straightforward the process of drawing the board of the game.

* Designing the educational scenario

*Children and/or novice programmers have to follow certain steps indicated by the educational scenario. The scenario has 3 phases:o1st: designing the gameo2nd: Implementing the gameo3rd: testing and playing

*Each phase is further divided in more detailed steps given to students as instructions*Notice the similarity to the software engineering cycle

* Build your own game in classroom

*Define your theme *Make choices about the aesthetics *Design the board*Make the rules and the scenario*Test and play the game*Explain to others how to play your game*Play other pupils’ games and make comments*Improve your game according to comments and ideas from other peers

*What do children gain?

*Acquire basic programming skills and digital fluency (important for the ICT curriculum)*Improve strategic skills and reasoning through coming up with their own set of rules : who wins, what a player should do when he/she takes turn*Develop their creativity and imagination thinking about the theme, the scenario, the aesthetics of their game*Enhance good-fellowship and camaraderie due to the multiplayer nature of most of the games

*Let’s see some examples…

*The colored dot game

The board

paint 3 forward 6 forward 4 forward 6 left 90 forward 3 left 90 forward 8

The dice

*The colored square game

The board

The dice

*The tic-tac-toe game paint 0

pen colour = red paint 1 forward 4 with pen up pen colour = green paint 1 right 90 forward 4 with pen up left 90 pen colour = red paint 1 forward 4 with pen up pen colour = green paint 1 right 90 forward 4 with pen up left 90 pen colour = red paint 1

*The mazeThe maze game is played by two players. One player builds the game and the other has to get out of it. One can also put a time restriction to make the game more challenging.

What makes this Implementation interesting is that the maze is created programmaticallyand therefore each time can be drawn in a different way by just changing a few parameters.

*The classroom experiment

Children who developed those IB games were pupils of the 6th grade (~12 years old) of a public primary school and it was their second consecutive year with LOGO programming. In the first year during a 4 weeks period (2 hours per week) they learned how to use the environment and the repertoire of all the basic LOGO commands (8 in total)In the second year they had another 4 weeks period of LOGO programming and they learned how to implement IB games

*Younger children (8-10 years old) acquired basic programming skills by just playing even simpler IB games

*The EasyLogo environment

*Easy Logo is a LOGO based programming environment very easy and simple to learn and handle*It is meant to be used by children or/and novice programmers*Has a limited set of LOGO commands (~10) and

supports procedures, randomness and repetition*Drawbacks: there is only one turtle, there are no

variables and no conditional branching

*In a few words…

*Board Games need to be re-invented in a computerized environment, because it’s fun, easy to play, enhance collaboration, logic and strategic skills. *On-line board games can be interactive, parametrisable and offer a rich game experience to their players*ICT and informatics curriculum can be

enriched by the integration of board game building and playing activities, especially in primary education*The LOGO language offers certain advantages for

implementing such activities in classroom, even for younger children (6-9 years old). The results would be even better if the LOGO based environments took advantage of the new touch screen technologies available on mobile phones, tablet pcs, etc.

*skiadelli@gmail.com

*Many Thanks to all of

you!!!