10/11/2010 Post mortem on… a birthday party part III
So what happens with a form like this? How does it work in Real Life ™? Will expectations come through?
I always tell people that applying these game principles and design guide lines lead to astonishing behavioral patterns. It is almost as if a hidden big red button is pushed. This is what happened…
After the ‘unwrap the presents’ ceremony I put the laptop on the table and started the presentation. They watched the first slides (taking the wafer thin storyline for granted!) and matter of factly solved the resistor issue (which I thought would require a lot of extra explaining). Than the had to find the capacitor in the broken equipment. Here my timetable went of the rails: it was too much fun. Even after they had found the capacitor I had intended (and found out it had a polarity), the continued finding and extracting fascinating bits of kit. I decided to stop it once the energy levels lowered and the first kid showed signs it was enough.
The simulation exercises with Spektro were great fun, leading to wonderful patterns of collaborative problem solving. Their ability to ‘debug’ circuits that did not work first time was amazing. On one occasion I had to really help them solve the problem, but then they were building a complex circuit with a LED display in segments which had to flash.
The badge ceremony was well received (although only on screen, more on this later). Than some quick drinks and the secret message to find the car. Excitement rose considerbly, handing out the nerf guns and the walkie talkie made them split roles (recon squad and attack squad, using their game intelligence and experience apparently), deciding on communication codes, and discussing tactics. The notion that some agents were out there to nerf them down in which case they had to report bac to base got some worried faces.
They left the front door backs against the wall, watching the street eagle-eyed. I let them walk for some minutes and than pointed them in a different direction since we had lost too much on the kit bashing. Some fake calls for enemies got them really warmed up and alert. In about 10 minutes we found the car where the two younger sisters welcomed them with darts flying. A short battle and we returned with the kit radio to our house, still on alert “because the hunters are still out there”.
At home, red cheeked and panting, we started building the kit. But timing was off, we still had to eat, so almost finished we had to put it aside and end the party with the meal. Given the success of the outside hunt and tension I thought we would get away with it. I was wrong. The same evening two boys rang up if we could not finish the radio next day “beacuse of the poor agents” and the fulfillment of their obligation to Jeremy, the lead character. I invited them back for the next morning. They came back and made me smile. They had made badges of Fimo clay for each of the party kids since “they had earned them but did not get them” so they had designed some of their own and my son got one they had made for him. They finished the radio in no time and it worked straight out! I fixed them with a long aerial and they had to ground it on metal (sign post) and of they went.
They spent two hours outside searching the waves for exotic stations, (and Afghan agents) and were really really excited about … radio! Somehow the magic my father had experienced in the fifties was back in 2010 where radio is so cheap and small it can be build into almost anything.
So apart from the timing issues (which I could have solved skipping one or two of the simulated Spectro assignments btw, couldn’t kill my darling) all went splendid. The boys were ectatic. One of the most fun bits is hearing them report to their parents what they had ‘gone through’, which most parents can by no means relate to sitting in a room on a birthday. Compare it to how kids can tell stories about a game experience, as if they were there themselves doing it. I will make no claims on validity of learning in this particular case since I did not measure etc. but the amount of focus and concentration on this subject was more than convincing. Any teacher would love that imagery in their classroom, I can assure you. It was fun, exciting, inspiring, engaging, fun to make, fun to do, and a true experience.
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