apologies for tactlessness

In my previous post, I had a great idea with a valid question, with the caveat that it isn't very nice to afterward tell the students "Yeah, you're all a bunch of mindless followers".  Gotta find a way to rethink that.

Challenging my assumptions

In most of my work, I seem to be making the following assumptions:

1. That "traditional" teacher-centered instruction kills the desire for independant learning.
2. That the "best" students in the traditional system are those who can spit out memorised facts, and that these very students cannot think creatively or analytically.
3. That games, by placing the player directly in the action and giving him or her the possibility to impact the game, encourage deeper learning, creativity and analysis.
4. That the deeper learning introduced by games will lead students to pursue knowledge on their own.
5. That being in a position to teach others will encourage the student to learn more about the subject.

I'm about to find out how true this is.  I'm planning to teach my human rights games to a group of university students here in Ecuador, then have them host the games for a group of high schoolers. 

Both the university and the high school students are mainly fairly affluent middle-upper middle class students, and both institutions claim to impart Catholic values. 

To begin with, I'd like to find out answers to the following questions by means of a group interview with the university students:

• What global issues concern you most?  What do you know about them?  What ideas do you have about how to solve them?
• What was your high school education like?  Did you get good marks?  Did you enjoy high school?
• How do you think people learn best?
• Have you ever studied something alone or with friends that was totally unrelated to school?
• What were your family's attitudes toward education?  Did they focus on getting good grades or on something else?

My question then is whether teaching them the games with a view to having them teach them to the high school students will spur them on to reading up on the issues (of human rights, teaching or game development) on their own, or whether they will simply follow my orders.

Whether my hypotheses are proven true or not, I still think both sets of students will benefit and enjoy the project.

Plus, then I'll be able to make a more rational decision about my own daughter's education, ie: given that the students I'll be working with are supposedly the best and brightest, having gone to the best schools in the country, is it worth sending my daughter to one of these schools if she will turn out like them?

The ultimate game: travel

While re-reading McGonigal's book, "Reality is Broken", yet again, I came upon the part where she talks about the game "Portal" which essentially twists the essence of gaming around: instead of being given the rules, the game itself is about trying to figure them out.  Now, of course, there are loads more games in this genre, but it suddenly hit me: THIS is what I've always loved about being in foreign countries!  Everything is a mystery to solve.  Talking with people when you don't speak the language and even the physical gestures seem alien, leaping over cultural barriers to get the simplest chores done... even reading menus or street signs is a challenge; especially for someone like me who reads voraciously in her own language, to be unable to read is the biggest challenge of all. 

The whole magic of travel is that no matter how much you prepare yourself, you will never be prepared enough.  That is the ultimate challenge!

Review of Republia game

Wow.  This game is truly disturbing.  According to the game http://dukope.com/play.php?g=trt, the instructions are: You've just been assigned the editor-in-chief position at The Republia Times in the glorious and free nation of Republia. You must use your influence to print positive articles that paint Republia in a good light.

BUT, they've got your family hostage.  Rebels are trying to persuade you to print articles against the governement, in exchange for which they will free your family.

Which articles do you print?

Game: Toxic Love

There is a game show called "Family Feud" which aired for a while in Spanish as "Que dice la gente".  You can check out the rules on wikipedia, but the basic premise is that surveys are conducted with people on the street with such questions as "what kind of kitchen spill is the most difficult to clean?" or "what personal care products are most commonly found in a bathroom?" and contestants need to guess the most popular answer.

The show strikes me as being the absolute antithesis of creativity because the point is to guess what most people think.

However, in considering dating violence or domestic abuse or any other kind of intimate agression, what struck me most was that it exists in abolute secrecy.  It's a documented fact that one of the first things an abuser will do is isolate the victim or swear her to secrecy through guilt, insults, fear or any other means.

This game format works to raise awareness of what can be considered appropraite dating behaviour.  The idea is the students come up with the survey.  Since this game is planned for English language leanrers, the idea would be to come up with binary questions (yes/no, good/bad, etc.) and administer the survey to other, higher or lower level groups.  Then the game can be played, if possible with the respondents of the surveys as audience.

Israel vs Gaza

This is not going to be a political entry, but my mom is in in a bomb shelter in southern Israel right now and it occurs to me that this particular round of fighting started with children.  For the sake of convenience, we can start with the incident a few weeks ago when three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and killed.  In retaliation, a Palestinian teenager was burned to death.  Obviously it didn't begin there and everyone has different versions of where it did...but the point is disturbing: a child for a child.  Soldiers are not fighting equals in this scenario, rather the revenge is taken on the offspring of the enemy.

There are hundreds of war games out there, but they're all about matched armies, or at least matched opponents in skills (ex: warriors vs monsters or aliens).  None that I know of really simulate this feeling that "You hurt my child, so I'll hurt yours" and so on in a kind of permanent zig zag that continues down through the genrations. 

Yet this is important to any understanding of any real war.  World War II, for instance, didn't just happen out of the blue; a lot of it was started in direct response to the horrors of World War I.  From Hitler to Israel to Gaza isn't much of a jump whichever way you look at it. 

How can we create a game that helps us understand the generational aspects of war?

Units vs systems thinking

Western civilization has a tendancy to divide things into units: people, parts, elements.  This has led to some of the greatest advances in history.  Capitalism for instance, with all its flaws, is still better than any of the alternatives.  Medicine has made huge strides forward too.  However, consider this old joke:
A urologist suggests that his patient drink less beer, perhaps replace it with spirits.
"But Doc, won't spirits damage my liver?"
"Yes, probably.  But you came to me about your kidneys, not your liver."

The point is that having separated concepts into units or elements, the challenge is to bring it all back together.  Sure cars are a great means of transportation, but they have to exist in the environment which they currently destroy.  We will never solve the problems of humanity unless we learn to see units as part of systems.

Therefore, systems comprehension needs to be part of the list of 21st century literacies that we need to teach our students..