Community-building Game Idea

I thought I would get feedback on this budding Community-building game idea i have for my undergrad edu game design class. I used to use our first session to do a jeopardy “name the game game” (but it had elements of pictionary and pantomome and stuff) and it later evolved to include questions about educational potential of games.

This time I am thinking of doing the game as follows

A. Students play in teams. I have a random way of assigning the teams with chocolate choices

B. Before splitting into teams, students write on a piece of paper their favorite game and sign their name. They fold the paper and put it into a small plastic egg (only coz my kid has so many i thought it would be cool to use them! Cute after Easter too). I would have a prompt on the screen to remind them there are diff kinds of games: board, card, role play, video games, apps, sports, TV game shows, etc (am i missing a category?)

C. Students then, in their teams would play such that one person comes up to the front and opens an egg. They are supposed to help their team guess the game using one of the following ways:
1. Use words to describe it without naming it outright
2. Pantomime/Charades (act it out without talking)
3. Piktionary (draw something on the board)
4. (can you think of another, please? Added later: a game of 5 questions where team members ask questions and person answers them)
5. Any choice but can only do this once
(and each team can only use ONE method throughout the game – so in a class of 20 i would have 4 teams of 5 and each team can only use pantomime once, Piktionary once etc and also for #5 have one additional time to choose any method. They get one point if they guess it correctly. If they can’t then other teams have equal chances of guessing (to be fair i can let them write it out not call it out and more than one team can get a point ; oh hey i could have #4 an option to get help from one person in another team…but that’s not a method…hmmm)

Added later: i could have egg color determine which “method” but i thought it would be cooler for them to strategize over how to pick which method (eg sports r easier to act out; someone who draws could do pictionary…)

D. Next step is to guess whose fave game it is. This is a full-class (not just team) thing. If they guess just by the game itself then cool. If not, the aperson who is holding the paper w the name of the person gives clues for the class to guess who. This part is to help me get to know them, as if they are introducing each other to me

E. Once we have guessed all the games, each team will have about 5 games with them. Their task is then to think of ways these games
1. Are already educational
2. Can be tweaked to have educational value
(i am hoping to have a 2-hour session to do all this; if no time, I will assign E as part of homework)

Homework :
Do their own google search for a reference on educational games and write a blogpost either:
i. comparing features of good educational games to their own fave game
ii. Comparing features of good edu games w the game they had played in class
iii. Comparing features of good edu games w another game they learned about in class or any other
(they must link and summarize the reference they find)

Bonus points or something for using a unique reference that others in class haven’t used OR using more than one reference.

Future work will include another twitter scavenger hunt which will also involve them finding better references via looking at hashtags on twitter and communicating w ppl on twitter to find good references or ideas re edu gaming

Any suggestions or ideas welcome!

Thanks!