We are all game players, "Homo Ludens" if Huizinga is to be believed. We play games. We like games. But can we learn through games? In his piece "New York Launches Public School Curriculum on Playing Games", reporter Jeremy Hsu writes:

Games have long played a role in classrooms, but next month marks the launch of the first U.S. public school curriculum based entirely on game-inspired learning. Select sixth graders can look forward to playing video games such as "Little Big Planet" and "Civilization," as well as non-digital games ranging from role-playing scenarios to board games and card games.

For Part One of this coverage, read up on Learning Through Games... At Public School!. For us RPGnetters, though, we need to move beyond press puff pieces. We need to design their curriculum.

"Quest to Learn"'s mission includes "We believe that students today can and do learn in different ways, often through interaction with digital media and games". So games are only part of the curricula. Given the Q2L website information is mostly PDFs, at least one of which ('Game-based Learning') is missing, I am short on information for which games are part of it. The article mentions just a few:

1. video games: LittleBigPlanet, Civilization, Spore
2. board games: Settlers of Catan
3. tools: Maya3D, Adobe Flash

What games would you use in the classroom? Remember they are aiming for middle school and high school, grades 6 and up, ages 10 to 18.

Obviously every RPG, live action, and board game suggestion from David Millian's Gaming & Education newsletters.

For language arts and English, I recommend branching stories, either online or in print. There are many non-fantasy ones, and tools to make your own. You can use a simple Wiki to create this. Briefly, to make a branching story in a wiki:

1. Authors do up each subsection or page as one entry, with a Wikilink to their next bit.
2. Other students can add a different Wikilink to take the story in a new direction. These can be linked off any previous step, not just the most recent.
3. Students can also link from a branch back to another person's contribution. There is no need to enforce linearity of scenes at this point.
4. Artists and photographers can insert illustrations and other multimedia assets.
5. At wrap-up, students act as editors in selecting a single path, collecting the work, laying it out, and distributing it to the class.

So for example, here's an example I gave Nancy Shute for a journalism class. The teacher writers a lede. Student 'Fred' makes a link from lede to his 1st paragraph, and continues with a link to his 2nd par. ... Read MoreStudent 'Velma' comes in, likes Fred's 1st para but decide to take a different direction and adds (not overwrites) a link to her own 2nd par, which leads to her 3rd par. Fred can continue his thread, or add to Velma's instead (or even link his 2nd to her 3rd instead of making his own 3rd). Photog 'Shaggy' meanwhile inserts links to useful multimedia assets, while 'Scooby' can put in alternative links to media he thinks are superior. When they're done, 'Daphne', taking the role of Editor can then decide what the final 'path' is to create the piece. For the next piece, they swap roles and repeat with a new lede.

Back to games. For deduction and critical reasoning. I suggest "Minesweeper". Seriously. Also the DS "Professor Layton" games.

For basic physics and mechanics, "Crayon Physics", the old "Incredible Machine" series, the DS title "Gravity", or just about anything from the list at PhysicsGames.net and Fun-Motion.

But you know what? For a high school student, I would suggest they do the web research to find games and apps. Hunt games down, then write a justification to the teacher for why they are curricula-appropriate. This combines research and language skills. Their reward isn't just a letter grade like 'A' or 'B', but the victory of being able to play any game they were able to sufficiently justify.

That's my take. What do you suggest?

Until next month,
Sandy
sandy at RPG.net