Asking kids to design games is an excellent way to demonstrate systems theory, social dynamics, systems of justice and fair play, equality, logic, consistency, blind obedience versus enlightened cooperation, the importance of infrastructure, evolution, survivability, the need for safeguards. In fact, in the microcosm of a gameboard you can show all the features of a society or community, the shallowness of zero-sum games, the danger of making war and predation seem like fun, and the thrill and wisdom of thinking on the meta-level. When you are empowered to make the rules for others, while you are king or dictator or god for that moment - what elements of human nature come to the forefront? Will you be nasty or nice, vicious or vital, cruel or caring? Will you come up with true innovation, or just rerun the tired old traditional hostility gambits? Creating rules within the relatively harmless simulation of a game can be instructive about the world of laws we live in. What game is Congress playing when our "lawmakers" start bending, breaking and eliminating the provisions of our Constitution? What happens when the "balance of power" becomes unbalanced? Can it be restored? I repeat a challenge I first made at the turn of the millennium: If any student or class comes up with a game that is non-predatory, intensely absorbing, demonstrative and rewarding of the best in human nature (nobility, honor, integrity), infinitely varied, easy to learn, addictive for repeat play, aesthetically pleasing and producible at a reasonable cost, my company will publish it, with royalties to the creator(s). Good luck to all you budding designers and thinkers! -- Kate Jones, President Kadon Enterprises, Inc. www.gamepuzzles.com -----Original Message----- From: edu-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:edu-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of miyu Sent: Thursday, February 22, 2007 9:21 AM To: Looney Labs Education Discussion List Subject: Re: [Edu] Class development I'm sure they will enjoy playing the games more than slowly designing something - that is why I want to outline a specific process of steps to get them started so even the least creative kid could come up with a general rule set for a working game. I also want to allow flexibility for the more creative kids to go to town and toss out some of my steps to follow their own process as long as it is something that will produce results. My tentative idea is to have 1 or 2 class periods each week of the 9 week long class be dedicated to specifically working on the game creation. The other 3-4 days would be organized around playing games/solving puzzles etc. Then the game design bit would basically be a final project. Thinking about it now though it may be difficult to design something like that in a 9 week course - in that case I might need to adapt my "final project" to something like design an expansion for an existing game. It might be amusing to have them do the art and create new dice rules for Buttonmen or make expansion cards for Bang! or something along those lines. My audience will also be of various levels, from LD, to BD, to gifted kids and everything in between. I'm hoping to make some sort of checklist for behavior and grades to give to the LD/BD teachers and have them evaluate a few kids each nine weeks so I can gather some statistics on if we see any improvement in behavior and/or social skills after taking the class versus before. It might be useful data to aid in getting a grant or other funding down the line to either expand the program or convince other area schools the program was worthwhile. Or perhaps the data will show me the program effects no change and it is a waste of class time. who knows. -Ryan On 2/21/07, Magi D. Shepley <magid@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: This is fantastic, Ryan! Both I and the other technology education teacher (my first year there were two of us) at the private school I left did major units on game design. In my case, it was a way of working on critical thinking skills (your idea, as well, I see!), problem solving skills and social skills. Students worked in groups to modify an existing game or to create their own game. I allowed them to modify existing games because of the population I was working with... I was at a private school for children with special needs, and within the school, had the groups (mostly boys!) with the most severe emotional and behavioral disabilities. These kids didn't leave their classrooms, so I taught Tech Ed on a cart! That was tons of fun when we had the blizzard in February and then all the rain we had that spring, because half of my kids were in a totally separate building! In any case, the other teacher had obtained a reusable kit for designing a board game, but I'm afraid I don't remember the name of the kit. The projects were interesting to most of the kids, but they infinitely preferred PLAYING the games I brought in (Fluxx, Mille Bournes, Pit, Uno, Mastermind, Sett, Rack-O, Life, and MouseTrap) to creating their own. Magi -- Ora, lege, lege, lege, relege, labora et invenies.