About collaborative games in SL

 

Some days ago I participated in an event organized in the Italian educational location Anitel. The meeting, which involved teachers and educators, was about the use of games and collaborative activities in Second Life and was run by Misy Ferraris.

Misy had arranged the space to show different tools and described with an action role playing her personal use of the Kip Yellowjacket’s Mouse Trap Game Board.

We were split into two groups and each participant in turn had to play, throwing the dice and answering the question related to the number.

It was funny and we acted in a very collaborative way suggesting answers to our team mates and enjoying our final conquest,  the Green Team won!

It was an interesting experience, I gathered various inputs to reflect on the way to improve collaboration and sense of cohesion in a group in Second Life.

It was, for example, a bright idea to make each participant wear his/her team t-shirt , this is not merely useful for practical reason but also because it does build a sense of membership.

When I use the Board with my students I will enrich this step letting members build in SL their own t-shirt with their chosen logo, this pre-activity could help creating collaboration between students and develop their process of negotiation that is so relevant when acting together towards a common goal (in a game or in any learning/training activity).

The Board can be used to practice a foreign language, focussing the questions on one  topic, for example, you can make participants work on specific vocabulary areas.

Kip is so generous to have made available to everyone the original board whose scripts can be easily modified adding/changing the questions so that the board can be used in different ways according to each educator’s objective.

 

P.S.: In the original Board Game created by Kip the path of numbers (and questions) brings to a mousetrap: if you land on it, your avatar gets trapped like this!.