I played an interesting game today. It was called Caduceus. The basis of the game was that there was an epidemic of a disease. Most of the people in your prestigious school has left for safety, but you stay to fight the disease with KNOWLEDGE! So you do these puzzles in order to move on and learn about the origin of the disease to cure it.
I went through about half the game and stopped. My quick review of the game:
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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I thought the game had a great back story to it. The plot seemed fully developed and included decent animations. There was an ok sound track and non-stereotypical voice overs. The layout of the game is simple and friendly to use. There are a few discrepancies between clicking on the area for the comic vs going through the journal. I was going to the same place to do the same thing, I should have the same options. The puzzles were hard to figure out. Some of the games were not simple enough to figure out just by looking at it. There was no introduction to the game. It just popped up for you to play. There's a help button but a few of the games make you go through a dialogue between two characters to figure out the game. Although that makes the game more realistic and more developed, that's not what a player wants when he's trying to figure out the game quickly. There should be a text to accompany the audio so that the player can review pieces of the "how-to" without going through 2 minutes of talking. Many of the puzzles were quite fun and challenging, even for a 23 year-old.
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So this game had some interesting implications. For the classroom, I think the simulation of being a professional or an expert can be engaging for many of the students. Here the student would be engaging in scientific study and an investigation to uncover the origin of the epidemic. There were two puzzles that dealt with organizing "interviews" to find out the identity of 5 people and the various characteristics that went with them. This was a very useful skill to problem solve and compile bits of data into one collective summary. It would also provide a common background experience for me to refer back to for examples.
What do you know? Video games can be very useful to the classroom.
This video game seems to lend itself well to academics, and the kind of learning supported by Backwards Designs. You wrote,
ReplyDelete"For the classroom, I think the simulation of being a professional or an expert can be engaging for many of the students."
This is a great way to tie in the simulation, embodying characteristic of video games with the thinking skills specific to disciplines. I could imagine this format translating to "be a literature scholar" for English, and having students "discover" information that supports certain literary interpretations. Or do you think this doesn't sound as fun?
Thanks for a great post!
Video games can be a great tool in the classroom. They are an extension of the games that students play all the time on their phone and also at home on gaming stations. I have observed students using these devices and they really seemed focused. Would not it be great to have this same focus with academics? I was really excited to see these new games last week. They have great graphics and interesting characters. Best of all they provide information in a way that students are used to seeing and interacting with it.
ReplyDeleteVi I really enjoyed reading your blog! I feel that video games can be a great tool when used in the classroom. Being someone who has not taken very many science classes I feel that I could really benefit playing some introduction science games before engaging in the various material. I think you could really help students who have low self efficacy in science by getting their feet wet and confidence up by playing simple, user friendly games.
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