Berlin, December 2008 - Gaming is being taken seriously by teachers and trainers all over the globe. Several panels during ONLINE EDUCA Berlin dealt with innovative games for eLearning. Serious gaming is often expensive to produce, but there are exceptions that demonstrate how a good idea or storyline can forge the foundation of a game that is fascinating and useful learning tool.
Mobile Gaming for Dutch Students
Henk van Zeijts from Dutch mediaLab Waag Society gave a presentation on the location- based history game "Games Atelier" for Dutch students. A national Make-a-Mobile-Game Contest starting at the end of the year will mark the launch of Games Atelier. Games Atelier is a new web-based authoring tool for the development of mobile games for students. Following a pilot project with five schools in 2008, the authoring tool will be made available for all students in the Netherlands.
The Atelier consists of a mobile and web-based toolset and the technology platform developed by Waag Society. Students use a set of templates to create the game collaboratively and work in teams on the technical components and on the content of the game. This means that each student can contribute to the process in a similar way, a fact that enhances fun and motivation to a great extent.
Using a mobile device and GPS, players have to navigate the city, discover the story line, collaborate with other players, and record and uploaded media such as photos, videos, and audio notes about the city and places of interest. While performing several tasks, they score points. Zeijts is convinced that games stimulate fantasy and curiosity and that playing together can also strengthen the pupils' social skills.
A first evaluation has demonstrated that the peer group of gamers learned many more historical details than students participating in classical lessons.
Simplicity is convincing
Euan Mackenzie from 3MRT Ltd, UK, introduced the learning game InQuizitor for school kids. About 250,000 children already play the game, whose basic idea is very simple. The InQuizitor Player runs though multiple-choice quizzes in about thirty subjects, which provide a highly compelling environment for study and revision. It is based on multiple-choice questions that the children can create themselves.
The Scottish game developer was motivated to develop learning games because he found most of the output for education very boring; casual games were so much better. He is convinced that playing games is everything: "Make the fun first and then think about what you can use it for", he proposes.
The game was designed around three key principles: engagement, ease of use, and flexibility. The game was developed by the same people who designed the computer games learners choose to play in their own time. Learners will immediately relate to the look, feel, and structure of InQuizitor and become massively engaged and enthused by this method of study.
InQuizitor is easy to deploy on the ICT infrastructure and easy to implement. The technical staff will find the game straightforward and won't have to show learners how to use it. Furthermore, people will want to create their own content. This easy quiz game isn't tied to any particular curriculum, subject, or level. Players can access off-the-shelf content or create their own.
