523 Final Reflection

In EDTECH 523: Advanced Online Teaching, I spent my semester developing a blended physics course based on discovery learning methods. I found ways to make the course highly collaborative and to include a similar quantity of hands-on lab activities as I do in my fully face-to-face classroom. This gave me the opportunity to dig deeply into the application of discovery learning principles to a science classroom, but it also helped me to picture what a primarily online physics classroom could look like.

As someone who has always prized the role of labs in the science classroom, I've been hesitant to make the leap to online teaching. In spite of my qualms, I decided to take the online teaching courses because we are seeing our physics enrollment decline as more students struggle to fit every course in they would like to take. One option is to offer a section of physics mostly online, giving students the extra flexibility they need to take a physics course. 

I tried to enter these courses with an open mind, ready to examine the potential of online teaching. I was pleasantly surprised by the emphasis on student-centered approaches and opportunities for active engagement that closely parallels what I've been trying to achieve in my face-to-face classroom. Building a complete online course based on these principles showed me that an online course can include meaningful collaboration and provide students with opportunities to engage in the scientific process. Armed with this new perspective, I'm now not only willing to teach an online section of physics, but interested in the challenge of developing additional web-based physics curriculum.

What Makes a Good Game?

In preparation order to use games effectively for learning, it is crucial to understand what it means for a game to be good. I've identified a list of characteristics that I consider important in a good game based on two primary sources. First, I looked back at the games I've played this semester from Sploder and elsewhere to look for common threads in the games I enjoyed. Second, I watched Dr. Reuben Puentedura's academic analysis of what makes a good game and compared his thoughts to my own. In the end, I was able to come up with the following key elements:

• A Clear Objective Some people can get into an open-ended sandbox, but I like to have a purpose in the games I play. I need to see a clear goal to enjoy myself.
• Intuitive Controls I don't like reading manuals; I'd much rather dive in and make sense of a game as I play. As a result, I prefer games where the controls are easy to figure out and it is clear how I should interact with elements of the game.
• Just the Right Difficulty Games have a "Golidlocks zone" when it comes to difficulty. I want some challenge; if I can breeze through the obstacles the game puts in my path, then there doesn't seem to be a point in playing. If the game is too hard, however, and I find myself failing over and over, I quickly loose interest.
• Increasing Difficulty As a player learns their way around a game, it gets easier. The game needs to account for that by providing new challenges as the game progresses.
• Chance Plays a Limited Role  I want my success in a game to depend on what I do, not on the roll of a dice. When chance is not a primary mechanic, I am an active participant in my success, rather than simply a trigger for a random number generator.

Learning Theories Mash-Up

To understand how games can contribute to learning, you have to understand how people learn in general. As part of that quest, I explored how two theories that are currently very important in science education, active instructional theory and constructivist learning theory, fit together to inform what a classroom should look like.

Active constructivism describes the kind of classroom I see many teachers striving for, but there are some very real challenges this mash-up does not currently address:

• How do we ensure students who are used to a teacher-centered classroom develop the skills to thrive in an active constructivist setting?
• What skills do instructors need to effectively teach in an active constructivist way?

Lastly, is it possible to have active learning without constructivism or vice versa?

Sploder Game Types

Mission Creator

To see Sploder's mission creator in action, I played Countown to Destruction and Help Your Father. The mission creator is used to design top-down shooters with multiple levels. Both games had simple a basic narrative, which appeals to me in games. I also like that the multiple levels make it possible to increase your character's power as the game progresses, even if only by picking up new weapons, giving a sense of growth during the game. I found the controls in the mission creator difficult to adapt to. In these games, the player moves using the arrow keys and rotates their view with the mouse. I've played plenty of shooters that use a similar control scheme, but only from a first-person perspective which felt much more intuitive to me. In the mission creator games, I frequently ran into walls or had trouble turning to face an enemy as I adjusted to the controls, which I found frustrating.

Platformer

By playing Game1 and Pirate, I was able to get a sense of what Sploder's platform creator can do. Both games have have many archetypical platformer elements, such as lots of jumping, which, in spite of years of trying to play platform games, I've never managed to get the hang of. Unfortunately for me, since both games do more vertical than horizontal scrolling, there was a lot of jumping involved and I did a lot of falling and getting stuck in traps built into the environment. Both games took advantage of Sploder's ability to add options not always seen in platform games, such as the ability to acquire new weapons and even vehicles, which added some fun elements to the game. I also enjoyed the ways a player can interact with the environment, breaking blocks by walking across them or shooting out walls.

Physics Puzzler

Sploder's physics puzzler makes it possible to create simple puzzle games, such as this one where the goal is to knock a block into a coin and the Sploder Physics Olympics. As a confirmed physics nerd, this type of puzzle appeals to me. I liked the simplicity of the gameplay. I also love that this type of game also encourages the player to experiment with the different elements of a level on their way to a solution to a given level. There were a few elements that bothered me. First, in some of the later levels, it became nearly impossible to correctly time a shot, making success feel more a result of luck than skill. To maintain my interest, I need to feel like my success is primarily up to me, not random chance. My other frustration was when the physics wasn't quite right. This made it difficult to correctly anticipate what would happen under given conditions.

Top-Down Shooters

Sploder's shooter has two main skins, space ships or robots. A more striking difference, however, were the different possible goals. Trutah Survival, using the space ship skin, is structured as a survival game, where players must stay alive for a set amount of time. The space-themed very easy and the robot-themed Defend the Emprium 2 both have a goal-based gameplay, where players must collect a particular item to defeat the game. I wasn't a big fan of Trutah Survival; I like to do some planning, but the sheer number of enemies that appear as soon as the game begins felt overwhelming. I much preferred very easy and Defend the Emprium 2 since it was easier to take in what was happening on the screen. All three games had various power-ups scattered around the level, a feature I enjoyed. The power-ups add an element of strategy to what could otherwise be a purely twitch-based game. Defend the Emprium 2, however, illustrates why it is important to be careful with power-ups. The game includes a power-up that makes the player invisible to enemies, making you essentially invincible. This potency requires the invisibility power-up to be placed with significant care. The first level, however, has several invisibility power-ups in a row, making it possible to remain invincible for what felt like a significant length of time. When the game becomes to easy, the enjoyment fades.

Retro Arcade

Haskell's Test Game provided an example of Sploder's arcade game creator. The game takes after classic platform games such as the Super Mario Bros. series. The gameplay was very simple and intuitive, in part because of the familiar format, making it easy to dive right in. I really liked that new skills in the game were introduced as they were needed, rather than requiring a player to read a long tutorial. In the second level, I found myself tantalized by the bits of terrain I could see when I reached the peak of my highest jumps. This made me eager to explore the level and find a way to the top. Finally, the I appreciated the very simple feature where the player selects their own avatar. This choice made it easier for me to identify with the character on the screen. The end of the levels, however, felt very anticlimactic; the game simply stopped scrolling to the side. I longed for a little more fanfare, even if it was simply something in the terrain to suggest I'd reached my destination, at the end of the level.

Saving the World with Video Games

In a TED Talk, Jane MacGonigal makes the argument that getting people to play more video games will help to save the world. In particular, she argues that the thousands of hours people invest in video games lead players to develop four impressive skills: urgent optimism, social fabric, blissful productivity, and a desire for epic meaning.

Urgent optimism is a sense that an epic win--a dramatic, challenging, and rewarding victory--is always within reach for every player. When players have internalized that belief, there is no reason to put off tacking important problems for the future or to leave them for someone more important or more qualified to address; anyone who sees the problem can do something about it now.

Games also promote a tightly-woven social fabric. In many games, the most dramatic achievements require players to collaborate, forcing them to trust each other to fulfill tasks crucial to the success of the quest or mission. This encourages people to build relationships with each other, bring a group of diverse strangers together towards a common goal.

When playing a game, players have a sense of blissful productivity. Players invest significant time and effort into developing their character or learning their way through a challenging dungeon in a way that very much resembles, but rarely feels like, work. People like a sense of progress and accomplishment for our efforts, and games readily deliver that.

Finally, games have a feeling of epic meaning. From the moment a player first enters a game, there are characters willing to trust them with important, but achievable, tasks. Everything a player does in the game has meaning to someone in the game's world and player's even have the opportunity affect great changes in the world of the game.

MacGonigal describes people who've mastered these skills as super-empowered hopeful individuals, people who have exactly the attitudes and abilities to effect incredible change. The problem, however, is most gamers only demonstrate these attributes in the virtual world. Most players use games as an escape from the real world and are able to become more engaged and more social when they enter a virtual setting. I've certainly seen this disconnect with people I've gamed with. Many players who are viewed as accomplished, well-respected leaders in the game, mastering the most challenging dungeons and defeating the fiercest enemies, may struggle to achieve on the job or at school.

One of the great challenges for our society is to find ways to make it possible for gamers to leverage the skills they develop in the virtual world to address problems that are just as important in the real world. MacGonigal and her company have developed some games that attempt to turn the might of the gaming world to solving major issues such as peak oil and a range of social problems.

As I look at my own classroom, the students who achieve the greatest successes are the ones who bring an urgent optimism, a willingness to weave a social fabric, a desire to embrace blissful productivity, and a longing for epic meaning, even if it is as simple as using physics to understand how the universe works. The students who are not currently successful almost certainly display these same traits in settings I simply don't see. Making games a part of the learning process, rather than treating them as a mere distraction, should open the door for more students to bring the skills that make them super-empowered hopeful individuals into the classroom and, perhaps, other areas of the real world. Letting gamers know the skills they have matter outside of the virtual world and giving them the opportunity to use those skills would have dramatic, positive effects on society.

Exploring Second Life: Role-Play Communities

To get a taste of the sort of role-play that can occur in Second Life, I visited an area called Avalon. In order to ensure I blended it, I picked up a new avatar (I selected a dragon) before entering. The entrance area has a castle with important resources for new visitors, as well as a variety of decorations to help set the tone. Signs posted information about the areas rules, including the dress code, as well as information on quests and how to obtain a "skydiver chicken". There was also a table with a few simple, free outfits for those who are not dress appropriately on arrival.

Outside of the entrance castle, the creators of Avalon have built a medieval village. In the village, I encountered several NPCs (non-player characters controlled by the game) who gave me hints about quests that could be found in the area.

I was excited to find a griffon at the edge of the village that I was able to hop onto in order to explore the region more fully.

As I flew across the landscape, I found many elements typical of high fantasy, such as a dragon players could fight. I found myself teleported out of the region when I flew too close to the dragon and caught on fire.

After getting the fire put out, I returned to Avalon for a bit more exploration. I stumbled across a fairy ring, complete with giant mushrooms and a cozy campfire. I could see not far off, however, the dragon responsible for my earlier mishap, so I didn't stay too long.

I followed a hidden path to make my way behind a nearby fortress where I found a fishing game.

I also found references to the legends of King Arthur. The specter of Lady Gwenivere appeared in a meadow before a waterfall, but when I approached to try and speak with her, she disappeared. On the edge of a lake, I also found a massive sword plunged into an anvil.

While I did not encounter any other players during my exploration, Avalon is clearly designed to support the immersive, collaborative storytelling that is central to a role-play experience. Because Avalon can only be reached by portal, other regions are not visible, making it easy to ignore their existence for a while. The rules laid out in the constitution of Avalon focus on how to preserve the illusion of a medieval fantasy world, rather than the typical forms of netiquette in such documents. Unlike the role-playing serves in a typical MMORPG, players visiting Avalon in Second Life have the opportunity to engage in open-ended exploration, with few specified goals or quests. The constitution even mentioned avenues for players to take an active role in adding to the space. This allows players interested in role-play to bring their own creativity into the game in ways that are not often available.

Exploring Second Life: CAVE Island

CAVE Island, an acronym for Community of Academic Virtual Educators, is a space dedicated to supporting online and virtual learning. The island have five partners: Boise State University's Department of Educational Technology, The Association for Educational Communications and Technology's virtual worlds committee (AECT SL), the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL), and the Applied Research in Virtual Environments for Learning special interest group (ARVEL SIG).

I started by visiting the ICT Library. The emphasis was not on books, as in a traditional library, but on interactive displays packed with information with links to websites with additional information.

The ARVEL SIG area took advantage of the opportunities provided by a virtual center. Rather than trying to create a building that resembles what the organization may have in the real world, they created a tropical region with a teleporter to get between portions of the ARVEL SIG compound.

One of the most interesting aspects of the ARVEL SIG compound was the virtual room. A door in empty space lead to a small room that reminded me of Star Trek's holodeck where the user can switch between a selection of vignettes. The room is an extension of Harvard's Virtual Assessments Project which is exploring how immersive technologies can be used to assess science inquiry skills.

I was also intrigued by the presence of meeting rooms in the AECT area of CAVE Island. While placed in unique locations, such as a cave or the top of a mountain, these rooms contained many of the trappings of a traditional real-world meeting room, including a conference table, chairs, and even a laptop attached to an LCD projector. These spaces provide the opportunity to hold otherwise traditional meetings in a virtual space. The use of Second Life, where each person appears as an avatar, certainly provides a different sort of online presence than other formats for synchronous meetings.

The most interesting aspect of CAVE Island, however, isn't any of the details or specific aspects of any one group's area. What is most exciting is the fact that five groups with related goals and interests, but spread across the globe, are able to share a proximity in a virtual setting, emphasizing their connections and providing them a space to collaborate and support each other's goals.

Exploring Second Life: Milk Run

I spent some time visiting freebie islands in Second Life to expand my avatar's options. Here's a few of the items I picked up.

Rock star outfit, complete with Iron Maiden t-shirt and a guitar

A medieval tunic

A Scottish outfit, complete with kilt

A jetpack!

A Harley

A pegasus

I also found a selection of buildings, furniture, and textures.

Love and Warcraft

The very first Valentine's Day that my husband and I were dating, he got me a copy of World of Warcraft. In my time playing, I met quite a few couples who regularly played together and even a few who first met through World of Warcraft. Thanks to these experiences, OnlineUniversity.net's infographic suggesting games like World of Warcraft may actually be a better bet than online dating came as no surprise. If nothing else, players who meet through a game know they have at least one hobby in common.

That said, something about the infographic rubbed me the wrong way. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, so I re-read it a few times, trying to identify what bothered me.

Then it hit me.

Gamers Get Girls.

That title says a lot. It starts the infographic by suggesting that gamers are men, while women who play games are something else. It uses girls instead of women, which makes for nice alliteration, but often implies less ability or less agency than the terms man or woman.

Once I realized the problems with the title, I saw the ways the rest of the text compounded the problem. Men are always referred to as men, while the term girls, with all the baggage that comes with it, is used more often than women. When the statistics include gender, they are focused on a man's likelihood of finding a woman interested in him, without any attention to the reverse (let alone same-sex couples). These messages were then reinforced by the final panel, were a man holding controllers is made irresistible to a pair of women by his gaming prowess just above the final words "Gamers feel good and act quickly. No wonder they're getting the girls." It all added up to suggest that men, not women, have agency when it comes to finding love in games.

While this infographic isn't outright offensive, the messages it contains are part of a larger problem. As Anita Sarkeesian effectively demonstrates in the Feminist Frequency series, games are a male-dominated space, in spite of the growing number of female gamers. Most games cater to male players; female characters typically have limited agency and are reduced to objects, often sexualized ones.

When I first went to install World of Warcraft, the packaging and opening cinematics were filled with scantily clad, sexualized female Night Elves such that when it came time to make my character, I couldn't bring myself to click female and made a male druid, instead. Eventually, I made a female gnome character, but quickly learned to avoid voice chat and either dodge the question or outright lie when a stranger asked if I was male or female since a true answer usually got comments ranging from mildly suggestive to outright harassment. Eventually, I gave up on playing with strangers altogether because I got tired of comments that could be mildly sexist ("You tank like a girl!") or outright offensive ("Let's rape that bitch!" before taking on a boss, usually female). My unwillingness to deal with that kind of behavior in my leisure time did significantly limit my opportunities in the game, so I'm very grateful that my husband was tolerant of these self-imposed restrictions and would join me for questing or exploration when no one from our guild was available to play through a dungeon.

My role as a teacher interested in gaming in the classroom makes these issues even harder to ignore. I have an ethical responsibility to ensure the learning spaces for my class are welcoming and safe for all students. As part of that responsibility, I have to be aware that games do not always meet that standard for women and consider how to overcome that issue. This is especially critical in fields like physics, my own subject area, were women are already significantly under-represented. It is considered an accomplishment that 40% of the students in my honors physics class are women. While games in the classroom can certainly benefit women as much as men, most students have already experienced some of the gender dynamics in video games. Ignoring that reality will only serve to drive more female students away.

Exploring Second Life: Temple of Portunus

Second Life's Temple of Portunus is a recreation of an ancient Roman temple. Not only does this location provide a way to visit a historic site without paying the price of a plan ticket to Italy, but it gives a very different experience than visiting a place like this in person. When I visited, I had the temple to myself, an experience unlikely to be replicated at a true historic site. There were also details, such as lit braziers, that would not be used in the real world due to the risk of staining or other damage to the stone of the temple.

The temple also included posts that teleport a visitor to other sites, such as the Temple of Vesta. To add some extra atmosphere, the temple was filled with what appeared to be fireflies. This detail added an interesting visual to my visit that, again, would not likely be a part of a visit to the actual location.

The site also recreated a hypogeum, an underground temple with pillars and statues surrounding pleasant ponds. Thanks to the teleport system between the sites, I was able to visit three very different historical sites within a short period of time, something that would not be possible in the real world. While this series of sites can't give the experience of touching the stone or feeling truly surrounded by the history, the virtual version does offer certain advantages. If nothing else, it provides an interesting chance to explore for when a trip to the real thing is just not practical.

Exploring Second Life: Virtual Hallucinations

The Sedig Schizophrenia Education area is a clinic building where players can experience a simulation of the kinds of hallucinations that come with schizophrenia. The simulation was developed through interviews with two schizophrenia patients. As you move through the building, the game attempts to replicate the auditory and visual hallucinations the two patients experienced.

Some of the visual simulations were more difficult than others. For example, the laptops in the font office had flapping lids and the floor of the main hallway disappeared when I entered. These hallucinations were distracting, but easy for me to dismiss. More troubling were the relatively subtle hallucinations, such as a poster whose text shifted from the kind of benign slogan common in hospitals to a profane insult. The small shifts in my perception required a double-take, absorbing my attention, while the more dramatic hallucinations were something I could take in and dismiss much more easily.

The most troubling part, however, were the voices meant to simulate auditory hallucinations. As I walked through the clinic, there was a constant barrage of insults, questioning the very value of my existence. It was difficult to listen to them for the short period of time I walked through the clinic, knowing that I had the option to mute my speakers or leave the area. It must cause incredible psychological damage to listen to those voices endlessly over the course of years.

Most of us, thankfully, will never truly understand what it is to live with schizophrenia. This certainly contributes to the stigma surrounding mental illness and the challenges in treating it, especially severe disorders. Virtual worlds have impressive potential to simulate, in at least partial ways, the experience of living with an array of illnesses, both mental and physical. Perhaps these kinds of experiences can contribute to greater understanding and empathy for those who struggle with difficult illnesses.

Exploring Second Life: The Space Elevator at Bowness

I read my first Arthur C. Clarke novel in middle school.  It didn't take long for me to get to The Fountains of Paradise, best known as the first appearance of a space elevator. While I don't remember much about the plot, the idea of a trip to space becoming as simple as a ride to the top of a skyscraper captured my imagination and stuck with me. When I found out Second Life had its own version of a space elevator, I knew I needed to check it out.

The island setting was a far cry from the ancient mountaintop monestary of Clarke's novel, but it still felt right. Everything was quiet and peaceful, with a small house perched on a nearby hill. The entire setting was in stark contrast to the noise and drama we currently associate with a trip into space.

When I entered the elevator, I was surprised by how much it shook as it rose. I've always envisioned space elevators as a smooth, sedate form of transportation and wondered how much of the vibrations were limitations of the software and how much were the result of someone else's vision of a space elevator.

On arriving on the second floor of the elevator, I found a room full of consoles and machinery. I was pleased by the mix of reel-to-reel devices that would have been familiar to Clarke when he first imagined a space elevator and the devices, such as the central pillar, that would not be out of place in modern sci-fi flick.

I tried taking the stairs up to the next level, were I received a note explaining a little a bit about the concept of space elevators. It focused on the potential future of the technology, mentioning carbon nanotubes and explained that this model is based on magnetic propulsion. The note mentioned laser propulsion, which is something I've never heard of and am curious to learn more about. This level also complemented the impressive view with some informational kiosks on environmental and ecological issues not directly related to space elevators.

On level 4, I realized I had been climbing a tower simply to reach the true space elevator. At the top of a tower was a pod that I entered and set to ascend. As it rose, I was able to watch the blue sky fade to black and fill with stars as it left the atmosphere and entered space proper.

At the top, I found myself in an empty space station. From the windows, I could see the distant surface of Earth.

The space station was small, and didn't seem to have much to see, but I did take advantage out of some of the mechanics of Second Life by stepping out of an airlock to see the station from the outside. The view, including what looks like the carbon nanotube tether the elevator follows, was a great finish to the trip. 

Tangential Learning in Games

In the video above, Daniel Floyd talks a bit about the divide that has appeared between games meant purely for entertainment and those designed for "edutainment", where the primary purpose is to teach something.  Many games from the edutainment side of the gap keep the educational material at the forefront of the game, force-feeding players the content.  Whiles games like this may serve a purpose in the classroom, the reality is that few students will chose to play those kind of games on their own.

Floyd suggests a solution from the philosophy of James Portnow, among others, known as tangential learning.  The idea is to focus on developing an engaging entertaining game, but to include snippets of real events.  For example, games like Call of Duty that are set during historical wars can include history such as generals and political leaders or actual battles, leading players to develop more knowledge of the era as they play.

Tangential learning can also come from references included in the game, which may lead players to learn something new as they seek out information directly related to the game.  For example, the Final Fantasy series has the famous villain Sephiroth, named for the 10 attributes in Kabbalah.  A player visiting Google or Wikipedia to read up on the lore around the character could easily stumble onto information on his namesake.  The trick is to find a way to make it clear when a name is an actual reference without bludgeoning the player with the information.

I noticed the effects of tangential learning in my own classroom shortly after Angry Birds came out.  Many of my students had the game on their phones and were quick to open up the game when they had downtime.  Simply from playing the game, they had developed some knowledge of projectile motion, including the shape of the path a projectile follows and the way the projectile's velocity will change as it moves.  It had a big impact on how I was able to teach and what I was able to ask of my students to have them begin with that intuition, rather than starting from scratch.

I don't see tangential learning, especially in the form of references as described by Floyd in the video, ever becoming a primary focus of educational gaming.  This approach leaves a lot of uncertainty as to whether a player will ever recognize, let alone act on, the presence of a reference.  However, when game designers keep this in mind as they develop games meant as pure entertainment, this kind of tangential learning can absolutely have benefits in the classroom.

Video Game Seduction Secrets

Keith Stuart's article in the Guardian, The Seduction Secrets of Video Game Designers, provides some insights into the ways video games pull players in.  Stuart points out that video games get players to eagerly and enthusiastically learn without thinking of it as learning.  Some of the ways video game designers manage to pull this off can have implications for how we encourage learning in the classroom.

Failure is Welcomed

Successful video games attach a low stakes to failure, ensuring that failure is not only allowed, but often encouraged.  For example, Stuart mentions Burnout, a driving game with such spectacular animations of crashes that many players would look forward to crashing.  In these games, failure is viewed simply as part of the process of mastering the skills necessary to pay the game.  As a result, players experiment with new tools or skills in the game in order to find out what they can do.

Too often in education, we attach penalties to early failures, discouraging experimentation and play with our content.  In addition, placing a permanent low score in the gradebook creates barriers for students who don't master content or skills immediately.  By borrowing from video games and limiting the stakes, especially early on, we can open up the door for students to explore academic content in the same way that many of them explore video games.

Acquire, Test, Master

Many video games introduce new tools in three stages.  Stuart uses one of my favorite games, Portal, as an excellent example of this cycle.  The levels in Portal are filled with opportunities to use the portal gun, the player's main tool, and elements of the environment in endlessly interesting ways.  Each new item is introduced separately.  In Portal, players are typically given some very simple pictographs to explain a new skill or tool.  That skill is then central to solving the level, giving players the opportunity to play around and see what they can do.  The next levels will often require players to apply the new skill in increasingly complex ways, giving players the chance to master it before the next skill is introduced.

The same cycle can be incredibly powerful in the classroom.  It is not enough to give students a new equation or a new concept, they need a chance to apply it and play with it.  Traditionally, this is done through lecture and examples, followed by practice exercises for students, but this structure discourages students from experimenting and testing the limits of their new knowledge.  Part of what makes new skills in Portal interesting is the limited instruction players are given regarding a new skill, requiring players to experiment to understand something new.  Students deserve the same opportunity in our classrooms.

The third phase is also all too often left out of traditional classroom instruction.  In Portal, you must complete a level before you are able to move on to the next one.  In order to complete a given level, you must master the skills included in the level.  In the classroom, we feel the pressure of days ticking away or more advanced students ready to move on and often force students to move on to the next topic before they've demonstrated mastery of the last one.  If we are truly building on previous skills, mastering one skill should absolutely be a prerequisite for moving on to the next skill, even if that means our students move through the course at different paces.

Player is in Control

More and more, video games put players in control of what is happening.  For example, I like to blow off steam by playing zombie-themed first-person shooter called Left 4 Dead with my husband.  As players, we control the pace at which we move through each level, as well as the path we take.  This allows us to carefully scout ahead and make a plan for challenging areas.  Periodically during a level, we encounter events where a horde of zombies will attack us.  These events are always triggered by the players, allowing us to make a plan, move items around to give us an advantage, and chose a strategic spot for the attack.  This control over how and when we face the most challenging portions of the game adds to much of the fun.

In school, students are frequently taken out of the driver's seat.  Their schedule tells them where they need to be and when they need to be there.  Teachers tell them where to sit and what to do during our classes.  We even tell them how to do their work and who to do it with.  Given the level of control schools and teachers exert, its no wonder we struggle to get students to feel a sense of ownership over their learning.  Video games are fun in part because we get to control so much.  Why not find ways to bring some of that to education?

Plot Twists

The story that games tell can be just as important as the gameplay.  Games like Heavy Rain and LA Noir are known as much for their surprising plot twists as their mechanics.  These surprises keep players on the edge of their seat, eager for what comes next.

In science education, we have some very natural opportunities for "plot twists" that are too often neglected.  Many teachers use discrepant events, demos or labs that have a surprising result, to create a need for students to learn something new.  If the science content is treated as a story, the discrepant events become plot twists, with the story suddenly taking an unexpected turn.  This kind of thinking about science content could help to create the kind of curiosity gaps that would have students eager for what will come next in school, and not just in their favorite narrative game. 

Engaging the Brain

In a TED talk, Tom Chatfield discusses some of the brain science behind the ways video games deliver rewards.  Given the ability of games to keep players completely engaged over long periods of time, educators could learn some important lessons from games.

The point that most resonated with me is the way games provide immediate, consistent rewards.  For example, games like World of Warcraft often include quests to collect a certain number of objects, usually obtained by killing monsters.  While only a percentage of the monsters will have the object the player needs, every kill gives the player experience points (XP) as well as some kind of loot.  These rewards appear right away, as soon as the player finishes their fight.

In my own classroom, I need to improve on providing those immediate rewards.  Some students get a little dopamine burst when they complete a problem or figure out how to complete an open-ended lab without any external factors, ensuring they get some sense of reward ever day in class.  Where I struggle is the students who don't get that intrinsic satisfaction; for these students, it may be beneficial to bring some principles of gamification into the classroom to provide other rewards.

The other major point I took away was the way video games provide a clear method to measure progress.  Playing Diablo III this weekend, I was able to see my experience bar fill up with each monster I fought, as well as how far I had to go until the next level.  The connection between what I did in the game and my progress to the next level was completely transparent.

In my own classroom, my students' progress toward the learning target is often more apparent to me than my students.  I need to work on strategies to help students see their progress in the way many video games do.  I've become interested in standards-based grading (SBG) as a way to help students see their progress, and I can easily imagine how principles of gamification could not only support SBG, but help students see their progress toward a given standard.  For example, each standard could be associated with a series of quests, much like many games have achievements for completing a certain set of quests.

Chatfield's insights into what makes video games so engaging have powerful applications in the classroom.  What keeps someone engaged as a player can be just as effective at keeping them engaged as a student.  In my own classroom, these insights could address some of the challenges I've been facing in engaging students.

Gaming in the Classrooom

OnlineSchools.com has an infographic (below) on the benefits of gaming in the classroom.  Over the past year, I've been studying what kind of high school science courses are the best preparation for college work, especially in science and engineering.  Reading the infographic, I was struck by how much games have in common with effective science instruction.

For example, there is ample evidence that active learning strategies in student centered environments are extremely effective for teaching science.  According to the infographic, games are motivating because they make students active participants, give students control, and provide opportunities for experiential learning.  In short, games have the potential to promote exactly the sort of environment I want to create in my classroom.

The infographic also mentions a Scottish study that found games are able to promote high-level skills such as problem solving, collaboration, and communication.  In science education, there is a growing movement to emphasize these same kinds of skills.  Widely accepted measures such as the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and the Advanced Placement (AP) physics tests have reduced the breadth of content in order to leave room for the kind of experiences that promote critical thinking and problem solving, collaboration, and communication skills.  The NGSS even explicitly includes communicating information as part of the science and engineering practices portion of the standards.  Once again, the right game can promote important aspects of science education.

Based on this infographic, there is important overlap between the kind of learning environment that games can promote and the kind of learning environment that is most effective for teaching science.  The right game can be a great addition to a science curriculum.

History of Gamification in Education

Knewton.com has an infographic summarizing the history of gamification in education.  As someone who started school in the mid-1980's, many of the events on the timeline overlap with my own history as both a student and a gamer.  In elementary school, I was slower than most of my peers when learning to read, so my parents got a copy of Reader Rabbit, which first came out in 1986.  The game gave me the opportunity to practice the foundational skills reading requires and helped me to eventually become a confident and enthusiastic reader.

Math Blaster, released in 1987, was another event familiar to me.  I had a lot of trouble memorizing math facts, such as the multiplication tables, and, as a result, was not able to develop the automaticity many of my peers had in math.  Math Blasters gave me a way to practice that was way more fun than flash cards and helped me to eventually become a top math student.

As I got older, I started playing Carmen Sandiego, which was first released in 1985.  While the game focused on history and geography, it helped ignite my enthusiasm for trivia (the more esoteric, the better!) that lead me to participate in Knowledge Masters (a high school trivia competition) and win a little money in College Bowl trivia events.  These days, the first games I reach for on my phone are QuizUp and TriviaCrack.

SimCity (1989) is one of the first games I remember using in school in a way that truly connected to the curriculum.  Throughout my elementary and middle school years, we'd take trips to the computer lab to pay games like Number Munchers, Oregon Trail, and Odell Lake, but they were treated as breaks from the curriculum.  In a middle school social studies class, we had a unit on what makes a city work and, as a part of that, we had to play SimCity and deliver a presentation on why people should move to the city we'd created.  The game became not something extra or a place to practice facts, but an opportunity to use higher-order skills and thinking.  In addition, the project required us to play the game in a group, marking the first time a game was something truly cooperative for me, rather than something to be played independently.  This project provided a powerful experience for me on what games in education can be.  As I start thinking about my game model, I'll be keeping this experience in mind and looking for ways I can bring the same kind of higher-order thinking into the project.

The next item from the timeline that I remember vividly is 2004's World of Warcraft (WoW).  I started playing while in college, shortly after it came out.  It didn't take long for me to end up in a guild where I got to know some of the other members.  As a result of those personal connections, I found myself re-doing quests or dungeons I'd done before (in some cases, many times) in order to do them with a friend from the guild.  At a certain point, I started to lose interest in many aspects of the game itself, but found the social connections still made logging in something I looked forward to.  While it may not be feasible for me to use an MMO on the scale of World of Warcraft for my own game model, my experience in WoW speaks to the importance of the social aspects of a game.  As I work on my own game model, I need to consider ways that students could rely on each other and work cooperatively within the game, to promote the same kinds of connections that I found in my WoW guild.

Different Types of Games

This post will be added to over the course of the spring 2015 semester.  It will be used to collect my reflections on the main categories of games in a single place

Action Games: Shoot 'Em Up

To get a start thinking about action games, I spent some time playing some classic 80s arcade games, Asteroids and Galaga.  One of the things that appeals to me about action games is they usually have a very simple premise.  In both Asteroids and Galaga, all you need to do is destroy the dangers before they destroy your spaceship.

As a science teacher, I'm very excited about how apparent the physics are in this category of game.  I was most aware of this playing Asteroids, watching the way the speed and trajectory would change when an astroid was broken into smaller pieces.  The way the astroids speed up after breaking into smaller pieces is very inaccurate, but asking students to prove that could make a great lesson on conservation of momentum or conservation of energy.  If the tools for video analysis are available, it could even be possible for students to take quantitative measurements of the gameplay and perform calculations to decide whether the physics is accurate, like Rhett Allain did with Angry Birds or Frank Noschese did with Flappy Bird.

Action Games: Platformer

Platform games provide levels that are a sort of obstacle course where players must make their way through hazardous terrain, collecting items and defeating enemies as they go. Some classic examples include the Super Mario Brothers and Sonic the Hedgehog games. While these games certainly offer some opportunities to analyze the physics present, they offer other opportunities for use in the classroom, as well.

Many subjects have certain skills or pieces of knowledge that must me automatic for students and the easiest way to develop automaticity is "drill and kill" exercises, where students repeat the skill or information until they simply can't get it wrong. Students (and sometimes teachers!) dread the drudgery of these exercises and are always eager for a way to add some fun. The fast pace of a platform game could make a great environment to encourage quick recall and rapid application of key skills while keeping students engaged.

The boss fights also stood out at me as an interesting opportunity for science classes. The scientific process requires students to seek out patterns in their observations, then use those patterns to make predictions or solve problems. Bosses in these games often follow predictable patters, requiring players to engage in a very similar process in order to find a way to win the fight. If students could recognize this similarity, they could apply the skills they've developed as gamers to become better scientists, as well.

Action Games: First-Person Shooters

For a refresher on first-person shooters, or FPS games, I spent some time playing one of the first installments in the genre, Doom 1. In the game, the player sees the game world from the perspective of a space marine fighting alien demons on Mars. While FPS games may not be known for their involved storylines, they are an incredibly immersive experience. As a player, you see through your avatar's eyes, which always makes me feel like events in the game are happening to me, rather than an abstract character on a screen. Even with graphics that now seem low-quality, I quickly lost myself in the action.

In addition to the opportunity for immersion, FPS games provide a chance to for strategic thinking. The terrain in Doom provides opportunities to gain an advantage over an enemy; shooting an exploding barrel can take out multiple enemies with a single shot or the terrain can be used as a source of cover, limiting how many enemies can reach you at once. This kind of planning can make the difference between making it safely through an area and becoming overwhelmed by enemies.

As useful as planning and strategy can be, an FPS also requires players to remain adaptable and to think on their feet. There is always a limit to how much of the next area you can see, and designers of FPS games are often skilled at finding ways to surprise even the most cautious players. To win the game, the player must be able to adapt quickly and effectively to changing circumstances. Whether in a game, in school, on the job, or in some other setting, the ability to adapt and think quickly is an incredibly powerful skill.

Action Games: Fighting Games

Street Fighter is perhaps the most iconic fighting game, a genre in which players engage in one-on-one combat using a character with unique powers and combos reign supreme. While Street Fighter focuses on quick reflexes, there's also a certain amount of strategy. Since each opponent has specific strengths and weaknesses, the player can tailor their approach to take advantage of that knowledge.

What makes fighting games truly unique, however, is that they rely entirely on the skill of the player. While the opponents get tougher, the player's character doesn't get any more powerful as you move through the game. You can't rely on an ammo cache or a first aid kit appearing at just the right time or learn the perfect route through a level. It all comes down to having the skill to pull off the right moves at the right moment. Whether a player is successful in a fighting game relies entirely on their skill. In case the player reaches a skill level where the computer is too easy, most fighting games even offer an option to play against another live player, requiring new strategies while still relying only on the individual skill of the players.

It isn't very often that you see a situation where your success is entirely dependent on the time you spend and the effort you make to develop required skills. Most of the time, the impact of effort is muddied by luck, opportunity, or the people you happen to be working with. Giving students an endeavor where their success is so clearly tied to skill and effort can send a powerful message.

Action Games: Driving Games

To take a look at driving games, I spent some time playing Shut Up and Drive. The frantic pace of these games has never been very appealing to me, but playing with the perspective of a teacher allowed me to see how much physics is clearly apparent in these games. I quickly figured out I had to slow down going into a turn if I didn't want to fly off the road, and the basic principles of circular motion are easily able to explain why. Namely, turning is an acceleration, and the faster you are going, the more acceleration a turn requires. Since a big acceleration takes a big force, a car that is going too fast through a turn risks sliding off the side of the road.

Students could easily be given an assignment to use physics to determine the best driving strategy and adding features, such as alternate surface or banked roads, could provide opportunities to bring more physics concepts into the task. Students could even be challenged to explain the behaviors of cars during a collision. Like the shoot 'em up games discussed above, driving games could also provide students the opportunity to decide whether the physics depicted in the game are truly realistic.

Driving games also have the opportunity fighting games offer to succeed purely on individual skill. While some have power-ups along the track or have mechanisms to soup up your car, the player's ability to drive effectively is still the most important factor in winning a race. Giving students the chance to succeed purely on their merits can send a powerful message on what success requires.

Action Games: Rhythm Games

Rhythm games, such as Rhythm Doctor, require players to use auditory and visual cues to hit buttons on their control in specific patterns. The most obvious academic use for these types of games is in music. Like many students, I struggled with staying on the beat and playing syncopated rhythms during my time in band and piano lessons. Games like this give players the opportunity to practice these skills in a different setting.

Some rhythm games can also be used to get players active. During college, my friends and I regularly played Dance Dance Revolution and would easily work up a sweat on the more challenging levels. This provides an opportunity to bring video games into physical education classes where the primary goal is to help students be healthy and active in the long run. Pickle ball and floor hockey never much appealed to me, but I think I would have been interested had my PE teacher set up Dance Dance Revolution.

Many of these games can also be used to make music history more interactive. Series such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band challenge players with songs from throughout the history of pop music, giving players an exposure to songs they may not otherwise listen to from a variety of eras. In addition, players are not simply listening to the music, but feeling the rhythms and structures of each song they play in the game, opening the door for a much richer exploration of the music than a straightforward listen.

Narrative Games: Text-Based Adventures

Narrative games, also known as interactive fiction, are my favorite genre.  As a kid, I spent countless hours on the family computer lost in Sierra's narrative games, including King's Quest, SpaceQuest, and Monkey Island.  In college, some friends introduced me to Zork, the game often considered the first the first narrative game.  Revisiting the game was a welcome reminder that it doesn't take the graphics of Skyrim or the bursts of action of Diablo or Half-Life to tell an engaging story; well-written text and interesting puzzles can be at least as immersive.

Playing Zork today, I was very quickly reminded of why I had notebooks filled with maps, quotes from conversations, and other notes that I kept handy when playing games like King's Quest (as a side note, it was nice to hear Nick Montfort talk about the use of those kinds of notes to remind me I wasn't a complete dork).  I remembered there were reasons to explore Zork's forest before entering the house, but I quickly became lost.  I walked in a straight line, figuring I could just retrace my steps, but I'd forgotten that, in Zork, going north, then south can get you somewhere new, rather than your starting point.  With a combination of stubbornness and luck, I managed to get back to the house and got out a pencil and paper to track where I'd been.

Text-based narrative games like Zork provide some great opportunities for students as readers and writers.  A student who insists they hate to read may find the interaction of a game engaging.  The relative ease of programming a text-based game could also give students a non-traditional format to publish and share their own stories.

Narrative Games: Graphic Adventures

When I was in college, my friends and I would gather every Monday to visit Homestarrunner to watch the latest Strongbad e-mail.  When the site released Peasant's Quest in 2004, building on one of the e-mails that quickly took on a life of its own, I played through it almost immediately. As intended, the game brought me back to the time I'd spent playing King's Quest and other entries into the genre as a kid.

Playing again as a teacher, I focused on the way these games promote experimentation and creative problem-solving. In most of the puzzles in the genre, there is some logic to the solutions, though it requires players to think about the situation or the items in their inventory in creative, non-traditional ways. However, what most people remember most about the genre are the puzzles with truly ridiculous solutions, which Peasant's Quest seeks to parody with puzzles such as falling in a mud puddle, then hiding in a pile of hay so you can steal some treasure to take to a peasant woman who will give you a baby in return that you then send through a tiny hole, after you've moved the rock hiding it, to enter a hut without a door knob all so you can get your hands on a peasant robe.

These puzzles can be frustrating, but they encourage players to simply try things in crazy combinations until you find something that works.  Few games will punish you for trying things and, if something does go wrong, the save files always provide a way to recover.  This kind of low-stakes experimentation is not something that you see often in schools.  As I've shifted to more inquiry-based instruction, I've had to get students to overcome their fear of being wrong so they will try even when they don't know what the answer should be or the full route to get there.  Graphic adventure games, for all their insane puzzles, force you to over come that fear and combine items in ridiculous ways until you somehow stumble across the solution.  I occasionally wonder if students would be a little more comfortable with inquiry if they'd played games like King's Quest.

Narrative Games: Action Adventures

As much as I've always loved narrative games, it took me until college to discover the action-adventure sub-genre. A friend convinced me to install a Nintendo emulator on my computer and made sure that one of the first ROMs I tried was the original Legend of Zelda. From there I ventured into other examples of the genre, including Diablo, Morrowind, and Fallout, as well as many of the installments in the Legend of Zelda series. I first played Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past on a Nintendo DS and have found it to be a game I can replay over and over, without it feeling stale or repetitive.

Link to the Past, along with many of the other games in the Legend of Zelda series, keeps at front and center the puzzles that have been a hallmark of narrative games since Zork began the genre, but the nature of playing on a console forced some of the puzzles to shift. On a computer, players have a full keyboard, along with a mouse and other devices, to interact with the game, allowing for an almost endless range of inputs and giving game designers the opportunity to keep puzzles open-ended, with a wide range of commands and inventory items for players to use. A console, however, limits inputs to a few buttons on a controller. The Super Nintendo, which Link to the Past was designed for, had only six buttons besides the directional arrows. As part of the limited inputs, players typically carry only a few items, since it would be burdensome to select from a large inventory.

As a result of these limitations, the puzzles are much more focused on how to interact with the environment in clever ways than how to use oddball items from your inventory in clever ways. The same kinds of challenges that appear in the puzzles from a graphical or text-based adventure appear, they just take on a different form. One of the things that especially appeals to me about the Legend of Zelda games is the way using your environment comes into play even in the action sequences. For example, in the first dungeon, many of the ledges lack a railing, making it possible to push enemies off the side with a well-placed strike or an airborne pot. With a little cleverness and an awareness of the environment, it becomes much easier to defeat enemies without putting yourself in danger.

While the puzzles in the Legend of Zelda series often have much simpler solutions than the ones in a game like King's Quest, they are no less challenging. The limited number of tools the player has and the limited methods of interaction simply require a player to think about the puzzles in a different way.

Narrative Games: MMORPGs

Massively-multiplayer online role-playing games, better known as MMORPGs, have become a huge industry. Players not only pay for the initial game and monthly subscription fees, but pay for periodic expansion packs and even for powerful in-game items. While not the first MMORPG, World of Warcraft made the genre mainstream. My first exposure to these games was in 2005, when my now husband got me a copy of World of Warcraft for our first Valentine's Day as a couple.

The biggest difference between World of Warcraft and other role-playing games I'd played was the importance the game placed on social interaction. Fairly early in a character's progress, a player receives their first quests that require them to enter a dungeon, a task that usually takes five players working together. At the highest levels, the game becomes focused on raiding, where groups ranging from 10 to 40 players must work together to defeat a monster or make their way through a dungeon. While there things a player can do alone, the most powerful rewards are obtained through tasks that take a group.

Working well in an in-game group was often a challenging task. Each player fulfills a different task within the group, such as healing, dealing damage, or drawing enemy attacks, and players must be aware of what each of their party members are doing in order to be most effective. In schools, we try to get students to rely on each other in an effort to promote an atmosphere of collaboration. In World of Warcraft, this was seamlessly built into the game.

In the larger raids, collaboration becomes a significantly more complex task. In the largest groups, it was typical to have a designated leader who would oversee the battle as a whole as well as individuals who would manage specific aspects of a fight, such as a lead healer. The players who took on these roles found themselves using the same kind of management skills that must be applied when managing a team in a face-to-face environment. While emotions sometimes ran high in the moment, these raids provided a low-stakes environment in which to practice delegation, leadership, and other skills crucial to working with a large team. Given the value of these skills, teachers and schools should absolutely be encouraging students to not only participate in a raid, but to take on a leadership role.

Simulation Games: General

To start thinking about the role of simulation games in education, I spent some time playing a free, online version of Sim City. I spent some time playing the classic EA version of Sim City while growing up and even remember using it in a middle school social studies class.  By high school, I started to find games like Sim City frustrating and shifted to other types of games.  Playing the game through the perspective as a teacher learning about games in education allowed me to see the value in the aspects I once found frustrating.

Playing the game today, I had a lot of trouble with resource management.  I couldn't manage to get the money coming in from taxes, so kept running out of money in my efforts to grow the city.  While this was frustrating, it involves valuable skills such as planning and choosing priorities.

The other thing that kept me from getting into the game was the lack of a clear goal or correct path. The game directs the player to build a thriving city, but leaves it up to the player to decide what that means.  I realized, however, that I regularly ask my students to make similar decisions about what is important and what success looks like.  This kind of open-ended approach can be a powerful tool to develop important metacognitive skills in students.

Simulation Games: Real-Time Strategy

To experience an example of a real-time strategy game, I spent some time playing Shopping Street, a game where you select stores for a retail area to try and maximize your income. A key feature of the game is that you must make decisions as events happen in the game. This is balanced against the fact that it takes time for enough resources, in this case money, to accumulate to allow the player to take some kind of action, such as building a new store. This provides many of the same challenges that I saw when playing Sim City.

Playing from the perspective of a physics teacher, I was struck by the important role that rates play in Shopping Street. Potential customers appear on the street at a predictable rate and enticements, such as news stands and benches, can be put in place to slow them in predictable ways. Stores can only hold a certain number of people, so finding ways to control the rate that people travel along the street is crucial. The rate that money comes it at is also important since you have a limited amount of time to earn a set amount of money. There are a plethora of interesting calculations students could complete that require skills similar to those required for problems involving velocity and acceleration. This could also provide a new context for the related rates problems common in calculus courses.

Simulation Games: Turn-Based Strategy

Turn-based strategy games, such as Risk (based on the classic board game), have several players take on the role of generals to take turns commanding their military toward some goal. Playing Risk, I had to prioritize how I would use the limited units provided by considering the most important objectives, as well as the potential reward vs. the likely risk, of any action I took. This was similar to the challenge of resource management in other types of simulations, such as Sim City. Most turn-based strategy games have a military theme, and many use historic settings, making them a natural fit for history and social studies classes seeking to give their students experiential learning opportunities.

One of the most unique features of turn-based strategy games is the need to anticipate what an opponent will do. Since each player acts only on their turn, they must be prepared for actions their opponent is likely to take each turn. Since students in science are regularly asked to collect evidence and make predictions, it could be an interesting exercise to have students articulate what they think their opponent will be doing in a few turns, along with their reasoning for that prediction.

Other Games: Card Games, Board Games, & Games of Chance

The other category encompasses digital versions of card games, board games, games of chance, and similar games.  I got sucked into the online version of Yahtzee when exploring this category of games.  Part of what made it more appealing to me than the poker and Chinese checkers games in the quest was the fact that Yahtzee is the only one I came into the quest already knowing how to play.  The random nature of dice also means Yahtzee gives rewards on the kind of unpredictable schedule that tends to tickle the human brain, likely keeping me playing a little longer than I may have otherwise.

The most obvious uses of these games in the classroom are the same as their analog versions.  For example, I've known math teachers to incorporate card and dice games into lessons on statistics.  Using a computer game for these activities can remove some cognitive load from students by keeping score and ensuring the rules are followed, allowing students to focus on the content appearing in the game.

For my own classroom, I've made use of games from this category where students use a knowledge of physics to solve a problem or achieve a goal.  I've had students use PhET's Electric Field Hockey to reinforce the ways a charge will move in an electric field.  World of Goo (or the similar, but free Huje Adventure) requires students to apply concepts like force and torque to get goo blobs to a goal.  One of my childhood favorites, the Incredible Machine, is a great way to get students to not only play with simple machines, but with concepts like energy and momentum.  Getting students to apply physics concepts through games like this is a powerful way to help students develop a strong conceptual understanding of the material and provide the kind of experiences that produce a lasting memory, ensuring students retain that understanding.

Other Games: Puzzle Games

I played a couple different puzzle games, including Construction Fall, a physics puzzler similar to Angry Birds, Bloxorz, a geometric challenge, and the classic Tetris. These are the types of games that I always have on my phone, waiting to fill an idle moment and had no trouble getting into this trio of games. All three have very simple gameplay and challenges that steadily increase.

This category of games are what I can most easily see using in a physics classroom. Tetris and Bloxorz require players to apply a functional knowledge of geometry and transformations to solve the puzzles while Construction Fall requires an understanding of projectile motion, forces, and torque. By putting these concepts into action, a player has the opportunity to develop an excellent intuition for how they affect objects in the game. With some creativity, games like these can even become assessments for the concepts. For example, students could use physics to explain why their solution to a level in Construction Fall was effective.

Other Games: Abstract

Line Rider provides players with some unusual game play. With no clear goal, players simply draw a hill in whatever shape they can imagine, then release a sledder that will glide along the hill as best as possible. While the possibilities for creating the hill are completely open-ended, the sled's motion along the line is controlled by a basic physics engine.

As I played the game, it struck me as an interesting way to introduce some important physics topics. For example, I frequently have students play with PhET's Energy Skate Park to explore conservation of energy. At the beginning of a unit, however, students are sometimes overwhelmed by the variety of settings they can change and get lost in the new vocabulary. The simplicity of Line Rider could allow students to make crucial observations, such as that the starting point must be the highest and the steepness of the hill doesn't affect the speed at the bottom, that lead naturally into defining kinetic energy and gravitational potential energy as well as into the law of conservation of energy, without overwhelming students with too much new information at once.