Summer Game Camp: Modding a SMALLab Systems-Thinking Game

Abstract

SMALLab Summer Game Camp 2011 took place over two weeks, where 20 middle-school kids modified a systems-thinking game intended for use in a highschool classroom, using their own metaphors and game mechanics (narrative, images, sound). We believe that allowing kids to modify games helps them to develop high-level system thinking skills, and prepares them to be successful in our algorithmically driven world. The kids move from merely being players and consumers towards reinventing the game as designers, and create innovative story lines and characters, shifting the representational plane away from the original game’s learning goals. They demonstrated their high-level thinking when describing their design choices in our daily group presentations. Our research on embodied learning in SMALLab indicates that learning about systems and participating in closed-system simulations in a collaborative & embodied, mixed-reality computer mediated environment, helps them understand systems experientially. Although much of the previous research in SMALLab has focused on formal learning, this paper is intended to share how it can also be used as an informal learning space.