PLAYPOWER blog / Learning Game Lists

Learning Game Lists

Simple iPhone learning games: Bookworm and Lights Off

What learning games designs are most relevant to affordable, constrained computers? What games should the Playpower project be looking at?

Learning games that are classics, with simple, influential designs (e.g. Math Blaster, Oregon Trail)
Learning games for Famiclones (e.g. Typing School, Music Board)
Learning games for related platforms such as the Famicom / NES (e.g. Big Bird’s Hide and Speak, Donkey Kong Jr. Math)
Learning games for similar architectures such as the Commodore 64 or AppleII
Learning games implemented on in a simple style on contemporary platforms such as Flash web apps or iPhone apps (Bookworm, SPiN, Geared)
Universal memorization designs (e.g. Concentration, Simon)
Universal simple interaction designs (e.g. Lights Out, Conway’s Life)

Which games someone feels are most relevant depends on practical issues but also learning philosophy.

On the practical side: Could a given gave even run on a Playpower 8-bit? What is the difficulty of porting / reimplementing / reimagining the original design? On the philosophical side: What counts as a learning game? That is, what is your philosophy of learning? If, like Raph Koster, you subscribe to the very broad view that almost all games are fundamentally about learning, then the question is a categorical one (“Which games are learning games?”) but a strategic one (“Which games are best at promoting the kind of learning I think is important for this audience?”).

Your focus may be on the “three R’s”… or it may be on re-imagining “Brain Age” style cognitive-drill games… or it may be on enabling open ended learning through Logo programming or interactive cellular automata. Regardless, we are going to be assembling lists of existing concepts, designs, and products that address the potential of interactive learning on constrained computing platforms.

8-bit Learning Games: Oregon Trail, Donkey Kong Jr. Math, Typing Tutor

Below are a few lists to get started (some more relevant than others). Interestingly, there are some that show up in several different kinds of lists.

Educational Games Research has featured a number of popular lists, including:

NESguide: Educational/Children Games

The Top Educational iPhone Apps

Our collaborators at the CMU Game Research Library have been remixing some of these lists, and also building their own, such as: “Non-Educational” Educational Games

On the community forum, Noah Vawter has started looking at Commodore 64 typing tutors

…and we’re looking for more!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 4th, 2009 at 12:38 PM and is filed under Research. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

WhymanDesign

Keep up the great work.

http://www.Whymandesign.com would love to creatively enhance your work for example with the user interactivity of the service and the organisation structure http://www.Traidmark.org

http://www.WEBiversity.org is one example of how open source sofware can be used with that business model.

http://www.Playgroundgames.org are also looking for co producers who can benefit from using an international broadcast network to 1. draw communities together (age/gender/race...) and 2. create an archive of the ways cultures play before they are lost for ever.

Ed http://www.twitter.com/whymandesign

Eric Bavier

I think the decision to include The Oregon Trail in a list of educational video games to be distributed to underdeveloped nations should be considered with much more care and sensitivity. The game seriously ignores many real aspects of American history and completely leaves Native Americans out of the picture. It forgets to mention that European settlers in most cases drove off other peoples who had already made a home in the area. These issues are not secrets. Any internet search should come up with many more examples of cultural insensitivity present in The Oregon Trail.

I would hope that we could keep our educational games as objective as possible, or at least fix serious flaws in presentation during the translation process.

dereklomas

For the record, Oregon Trail does involve Native Americans... For an 8-bit game, I think it does a pretty good job of illustrating the conflicting emotions of people at the time. Not to say the game is ideal, but I do understand its popularity among educators and students.

I'd be interested in what you think of the game, if you play through it again. It can be found at http://www.virtualapple.org/oregontraildisk.html

Jeremy Douglass

On the topic of how Oregon Trail originally depicted Native Americans, here is a short summary with a reference to a longer work by Bill Bigelow:

Along The Trail: What does the player encounter along the way?
http://web.wm.edu/amst/370/2005F/sp1/along_the_...

Also: a more recent discussion of the game was a guest talk that some of the original Oregon Trail developers did at the Nerdery this month:
http://blog.nerdery.com/2009/10/blazing-the-ore...

Dr. Mike Reddy

This is why, for me at least, it's important that the end user gets accessible dev tools. My wife trains Nurses for people with Learning Disabilities, and the the Disabled Community has the mantra "Not about Us without Us!" which means the best cutlurally significant and relevant software is probably going to be that which is developed within/for/by that community. Cultural Imperialism is only likely early on, or if the end users are trapped in consumption, rather than production of software.

Playpower Foundation

Eric,

I appreciate your concern about Oregon Trail being used as an accurate
depiction of history (rather than as a simulation of particular
concepts of travel and trade). Two points to consider:

1. As far as I know, neither these games as such nor the list are
intended for *direct* distribution in a curricular sense. Instead, the
primary idea is to consider their designs as relevant *models* for new
original learning designs on constrained platforms. This makes no
particular claims about the merits of their content or form, or their
fitness to a particular educational purpose. On the one hand, a new
simulation about resource management and travel might be implemented
along similar lines in a fictional world with no historical claims
(e.g. Space Trail). On the other hand, a new game might use similar
modeling methods of resources and travel as Oregan Trail, but instead
focus on depicting an alternate dangerous traversal in history marked
by limited resources (e.g. the Trail of Tears, the Bataan Death March,
etc.)

2. I personally don't think that cultural objectivity is possible (or
desirable). There are contexts in which Donkey Kong could (and should)
offend, or in which the idea of a "bookworm" might be culturally
illegible and thus detract or distract from learning. Rather than than
one-size-fits-all learning games, my personal opinion is that the
mechanics and appearance, form and content of learning games should be
appropriate to the learning community -- AND to the learning goals,
whether they be historical, logical, or other. That's why I believe it
is important to encourage broad access to as many new designs and
platforms as possible, and consider as many models from the past as
possible in fostering the design diversity of the future. I take your
point however that there is no reason to be needlessly offensive or
off-putting.