Why Games?

On Friday, we worked together to play the game Forbidden Island as a reward for having a good marking period and a good day with the guest teacher on Thursday.  Forbidden Island is a cooperative game where the entire team of people playing the game either wins of loses together.  Students were excited and took to the game very well.  It is one of my favorite beginner hobby games and great for the whole family.

Why do I introduce board games and board game design?  Besides being one of my favorite hobbies, I love games for their ability to teach social skills and character building.  It is important to know how to win and to lose graciously.  It is also important to develop a sense of working within a set of rules to solve a problem and look for ways to improve your play next time.

We will soon be working on the process of learning about the parts of board games and designing our own board games.  This process teaches creative thinking, problem solving, and the process of iteration.  Iteration is one of the most important skills needed to critically think through academic challenges going forward.  Iteration is the process of taking an answer and thinking through it again and through a process making it work better each time.

We use iteration in writing when we edit, revise, and rewrite.  We use it in science as we work to understand a phenomena and test and experiment with it.  We use it in math as we encounter more difficult problems that might take trying two approaches to see which one works better.  One of the things I will be working on academically is this process of thinking through your answer because your first idea doesn't always have to be the final answer.

I look forward to helping students solve problems and think through their project and make changes as they find things that don't work as well.  Testing and iteration is fun when you are designing a game, but it is even more important to develop as you develop critical thinking skills.