Games played in the course |
Other games |
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Social studies
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Science
Music
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Nomic was developed by Peter
Suber, to illustrate some properties of
systems that can amend themselves. The connection to law making
systems is obvious, but other systems, such as living systems and social
systems with implicitrurulesogoverninghem, could also be understood
in terms of Nomic.
Lots of details about Nomic and Suber's work can be found on the
Web at http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/.
Nomic begins with an initial set of rules, and a move in the game
consists of trying to change these rules.
Our work with Nomic is described on these web pages:
Sydney Sackson's game of patterns is a simulation of the scientific
process of conjecturing and testing theories about the world. One
player creates a pattern on a grid and the other players request information
about individual cells in the grid until they feel they can guess
the pattern. Players get points for correctly guessing cells.
[Game modified for teacing
math] [Links]
Robert Abbot's Eleusis is a simulation of the scientific process of
conjecturing and guessing theories about the world.. ONe player
defines a rule for playing card in a sequence. The other players
take turns adding cards to the sequence , which are ruled right or wrong.
From the history of right and wrong cards the players attempt
to guess the rule so that they can discard their cards quickly, or
take over the ruling on other players cards as a "prophet". [Links]
Mad Libs a word game. Players suggest words to fill in the blanks
of a hidden story, which is then read aloud to all the players. [Links]
The Oulipo group explores creative writing under various constraints
(e.g., not using the letter E). Such writing offers many opportunity
to become more aware of the nature of language. [Links]
Computer programmers have long dreamed of teaching a computer to
talk. Just getting a computer to produce a grammatically correct
sentence turns out to be quite a challenge in itself. One learns
a lot about the structure of language along the way.
The prisoner's dilemma is this:
Pure logic says you should implicate your fellow, because otherwise you
risk the worst outcome, going to jail for 5 years. Of course,
in practice people don't always behave logically. And if you
were going to be do this over and over again, it would be better to
build up some trust and avoid the worst outcomes entirely. Then
the problem becomes the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, a simulation of
the social and biological evolution of altruism. [Links]
A modification of the dilemma with a third choice for the prisoner: Taciturn,
neither complying nor resisting but merely remaining silent. This could be
modified for biological analogies to represent freeze in the fight or flight
paradigm. [Full
game description]
This modification of the Prisoner’s Dilemma uses the situational problem set-up to allow the students to make decision with regard to economic principles. This game is meant to simulate the decisions that an entrepreneur would need to make when organizing their business plan. [Full game description]
Bafa Bafa is a simulation of cross-cultural interactions that allows for exploring assumptions and behaviours. [Full game description]
The Biodiversity Game (a.k.a. “The Bean Game”), was created by Dr. Martin Willison, professor of Biology at Dalhousie University. It has been used as a teaching tool in his course Nature Conservation, where it is used to illustrate the fact that a global loss of diversity is often not noticed locally because local diversity can remain stable or even increase while global diversity drops. [Full game description]
The Trading Game allows one to simulate the impact on trading potential
of an unequal distribution of necessary resources. [Full game description]
This is a simulation used to teach students about earthquakes and some graphing skills. The students get into a line and assume one of three roles. They are the earthquake, the medium, or the seismometer. The students get into a line and produce waves that simulate an earthquake. [Full game description]
When studying about the Industrial Revolution and its effects on workers and productivity, this short simulation will help students understand why the concept of division of labour was utilized in the fledgling industries. [Full game description]
A simulation card game used to teach students about the energy changes associated with a change in matter. Students draw cards from the deck to complete their reaction both elementally and energetically. [Full game description]
Identify and discuss influences on one’s own and others’ perceptions, opinions and responses. [Full game description]
Exploring cross-cultural differences through simulation [Full game description]
A game about inter-cultural awareness [Full game description]
Students rearrange cards to find patterns, in the same way that Dimitri Mendeleev did to predict the properties of unknown elements. [Full game description]
A look at problems faced by those living below the poverty line. [Full game description]
A Co-operative Game [Full game description]
A Co-operative Game [Full game description]
This game attempts to simulate the process of organizing plants or animals according to their phylogeny, i.e. systematics. Players of the game are given a selection of pictures of imaginary animals as well as a description of their classification philosophy, and are asked to group their animals accordingly. Following this, players discuss the different groupings that were created and the factors that affected the composition of the various groupings. Full game description
This is a simulated, role-playing discussion and decision-making
exercise that addresses the issues of security in an age of terrorist threats.
Full game description
This is a game that teaches (in a discovery mode) what the essentials were for early civilizations. Students explore scenarios that leaders of growing villages may have had to encounter. Full game description
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