Jenkins' third characteristic of a successful serious game is its use of play as a learning strategy. We made each of the modules competitive (in addition to ‘pass' and ‘fail' each has a possible score of “best,” bestowing bragging rights on those students who do especially well) while keeping the consequences of failure low to encourage experimentation. Fourth on his list is that every element of the game design is meaningful, so that users spend their time learning the content and not the interface. To achieve this we made the interface both simple and as near as possible to environments with which students will already be familiar. We also provided a Help tool which gives both text and audio instructions when needed.
Fifth, Jenkins notes that successful serious games are social, rather than individual. Although time and budget constraints prevented us from creating a multiplayer version of Passport to the Internet, we've used the Teacher's Guide to provide opportunities for students to compare their experiences and share what they have learned. Finally, Jenkins observes that for any game to be successful it must be fun. We made the learning activities as entertaining and involved as possible—creating a social networking profile, carrying on a conversation with an online friend—to make sure that going through Passport to the Internet always felt like playing a game.
The landscape is littered with educational games that have failed for a variety of reasons: those that were insufficiently entertaining, those that had too little educational value, those where the match between the game and the content was too distant and arbitrary, and those where there simply wasn't enough time and money to make it work. Every designer has compromised on one or more of these, and we are no exception. We believe, though, that by being mindful of these concerns we have made Passport to the Internet a rich and powerful tool for teaching Internet literacy skills.
Passport to the Internet is available through a licensing arrangement as a stand-alone resource or as part of the MNet's professional development program Web Awareness Workshop Series. A video overview can be seen at:
http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/catalogue/
products/descriptions/passport_preview.cfm .
Passport to the Internet partners are: Inukshuk Wireless Learning Plan Fund, TELUS, Elementary Teachers' Federation of Ontario, Toronto Catholic District School Board, London Public Library, and Nortel LearniT.
About the Author
|
Matthew Johnson is a Media Education Specialist with Media Awareness Network, Matthew creates resources for educators, parents and community groups. He is the designer of Passport to the Internet, MNet's comprehensive Internet literacy tutorial for Grades 4-8. Matthew also writes the Talk Media blog, one of the most popular sections of the MNet Web site, where he has written on a wide variety of subjects, including a six-part series on the history and future of Web 2.0 He has given presentations and interviews to parents, school, community and industry groups on topics such as the effect of media violence on children, video game addiction, alcohol advertising, children's use of new media and the moral dimensions of computer games. Matthew is an educator with nearly ten years' experience teaching media education, film-making, English and special education among other subjects. His experience also includes award-winning work as a writer of prose, plays, radio and television scripts
Email Matthew Johnson
|
References
Bruer, J. (1993). Schools for Thought: A Science of Learning in the Classroom . Cambridge: MIT Press.
Jenkins, H. (2007, November 19). From serious games to serious gaming. Message posted to Confessions of an Aca-Fan, archived at http://henryjenkins.org/2007/11/from_serious_games_to_serious_7.html .
Perkins, D. N. & Salomon, G. (1989). Are cognitive skills context-bound? Educational Researcher 18 (1) 16-25.
Steeves, V. & Wing, C. (2005). Young Canadian in a wired world. Media Awareness Network, http://media-awareness.ca/english/research/ycww/index.cfm
Steinkuehler, C. & Duncan, S. (2008). Scientific habits of mind in virtual worlds. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 17 (6), 530-543.
Wright, W. (2006, April.) Dream machines. Wired 14 (4), 110-112.
Appendix A: Current Game Screenshots
Cats Dream
Instant Pigeon
My Face
