Sanna and Ville have both slightly altered the course of their projects.
We virtually met on Dec 13th, and though the projects still focus on language acquisition and influencing behavior, the topics have changed a bit.
These are just notes for me to remember my train of thoughts…
Sanna
Language teaching/learning/acquisition by means of an easy to distribute, easy to learn and to play analog social game, possibly catering to players of a specific cultural background and a specific group constellation of players (first idea: multigenerational, i.e. mother-children; or peer-gendered, i.e. immigrant mothers).
- How can the native language and cultural background of the target group (Somali women; finnish pupils; or finnish adults) be made into a starting point or even an asset for learning a specific foreign language (finnish; german; danish)?
- What kind of game mechanic would fit best, culturally and didactically? “Go Fish” is quite well known in Germany and easy modifiable as well in its mechanics as its narrative aspects – but as with “Sorry”/”Pacheesi”/”Mensch Ärgere Dich Nicht!”, I overestimated its cultural impact of these games… maybe “Go Fish!” isn’t that well known i.e. in Finland.
- There is an extensive list of dedicated card games available at wikipedia. Maybe one or more game mechanic may be modified to suit the project’s requirements.
- If correct pronounciation is a main problem in language acquisition (as Ville stated for Dansk), then a card game alone won’t get the job done – you would need players fluent in the language to correct the learners, without turning this cognitive ressource into a massive disadvantage for the learning group. We need either a cooperative game, or a game with different role assignment (“teachers” and “learners”) with different winning conditions.
Ville
A multiplayer online game requiring energy saving behavior to be played (and won), based upon real life open data of personal energy consumption or actual energy consumption behavior. Idea was that someone has to survive in a postapocalyptic, arctic world, threatened by ice-monsters; and that your means to increase your range of moves and possibilities is getting to modify your energy consumption behavior to the better in real life.
- What does the player need in skills, motivation, and attitude to play, to remain playing, and to ‘win’ the game?
- What does he or she has to bring into the game (as an asset or as starting condition), what does he or she acquire or learn during gameplay?
- What is important within the game, what is important outside of it? How do these two aspects relate to each other? Are the strategies comparable or even transferable both for saving energy and to prevail in the (postapocalyptic) gameworld?
As an example I mentioned chess, where you can take a chess piece only if you answer a random vocabulary question, or where your knowledge of vocabularies decides whether the attacking or the attacked piece is removed.
You have to be thus knowledgeable both in vocabulary as well in chess rules. Where do you get these knowledges from? Where do you get to learn chess strategy and a mnemotechnic strategy to compete in both fields? And is there a common narrative that joins these two ‘games’, turning them into a meaningful whole? (e.g. “It’s a simulation of two cultures clashing with specific expressions, and in the long run only that culture wins, that has more – or better fitting – words at hand…”) - How do you reward those players who already have mastered the strategy of “Energy Saving”? How do you keep those playing and learning this strategy, who haven’t learned it yet? And how do you teach them (or let them learn it)? Should they do research on their own? Should it be, somehow, part of the game?
