Everything I Ever Needed To Know I Learned From RPGs

[Onix]

Okay, maybe not but what if it were true?

In my next bid for world domination I've been thinking about education. Actually I have two young ones and my younger child is not having a good time with the school system. Not that he's being bad, he just doesn't do well with the school's brand of structure.

We've been thinking of going back to homeschooling and that's had me on the look out for information on education and I am constantly hitting articles on how the schools need this or that. I thought about how much I've learned by playing RPGs. Math, writing, problem solving, critical thinking to name a few and I came up with the thought of an . The link is a basic explanation of what I'm thinking of. I don't have a lot of details yet, mostly grey fuzzy pictures in my head of how things could work. It'll be something I'd like to develop and I wonder if it would be useful to others. If anyone is interested in that kind of project, let me know. It's a big undertaking and I have only a vague idea of how to start the task so another hundred monkeys typing away might make it almost possible to accomplish.

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

I am 100 percent behind a project like this.

I have had the unique opportunity to be on almost all sides of this experience. In fifth and sixth grade we conducted a number of simulation projects. Two I recall from fifth dealt with the colonization and expansion of the united states. One was starting our own colonization concern (choosing our patron, supplies, when to trade or attack Indians, and seeing how much territory we could take) another was effectively an analog version of the Oregon Trail video game. In sixth grade, we had to show up to our classes on Greece and Rome in a toga, gained points by polis (or in my case, as the Spartan spy in Athens did it for someone else) and worked on a number of projects related to the civilizations. (Preparing accurate food, building ancient Egyptian toys, holding debates in the roman forum and plays by Euripides) We also had a laser disk presentation of "The Voyage of the Mimi" where we learned about nature, whales, and sailing.

Conversely, I have also suffered through classes that desperately needed something like this. My grades in mathematics classes throughout high-school were quite low. Of special note - in "Pre-calculus" I was doing terrible, and when I point blank asked the teacher what was the point of what we were learning - the answer was "its preparation for the next level trigonometry course". Meanwhile in Advanced Placement Physics, I was doing OK - even though it was calculus as well (Acceleration, static friction, electric fields) this had a purpose and reason behind it.

Learning is a matter of context. Most people learn because they are interested in the topic, and its hard to be interested in something that seems to have no real-world connections. Like the concept from the book Fahrenheit 451 - there is a difference between schools teaching introspection and wisdom and those that just stuff you full of "non-combustible facts".

Of special interest to you might be the website "". It is a series of simple war games from a wide range of time periods, meant to teach grade school classes about the problems faced in historical battles.

Inspired by the above site, I've wanted to write a teaching game based on some aspects of world war two naval combat - either submarines or PT boats. After-all, the story of John Kennedy and PT-109 is fairly well known, but what he was doing aboard that ship less so. My desires for simulation accuracy has gotten somewhat in the way of keeping the games simple enough for classroom play, however, making these back-burner projects.

What topics do you want to teach?

[Onix]

I'm going to be starting out with trying to satisfy a 4th and 6th grade New York State curricula, because thats what I need right now. Each year I'd have to do the next years curricula. There are a few other RPEs that I feel I could write competently and my thought is if someone is an expert (ok i'll take competent) in something then the curricula would best be written by them.

Math comes to mind first as the first RPE that I want to work on. I think Math is one of the subjects that needs this the most.

I really want to hear more about how your (history?) teacher structured the simulation projects. I've been trying to figure out how best to give an RPE a framework to start from. I know a few teachers that might be interested in working on this if I can give them a basic how to.

[Rob Lang]

I'm immediately grabbed by the idea. Definitely check out system that was used to teach multiplication. I think he designed the system in such a way that the local school would see a teaching benefit to running RPGs there. Definitely get in touch with Jeff (he's on here too) because he's a very helpful chap.

You might also want check out the , a teacher who used the popular game in schools.

[Onix]

Great resources Rob! I think there's a lot to be learned from the Minecraft Teacher, not only the techniques but in the adoption by other teachers. That's actually heartening to see that he's getting such a positive response and not having his house burned down by angry teachers. I'm going to be studying his example.

I'll take all the help I can get, I'll reach out to Jeff soon. I'm trying to crystalize my thoughts on this, once I make some progress I'm hoping to be able to explain this with more clarity.

I think I need a place to collaborate. I'll setting up something to track the work on this soon. I'm thinking that a wiki would be adequate. If anyone has other suggestions on software that might be a good platform let me know.

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

[SheikhJahbooty]

Yeah,

I don't remember these grades either.

What mathematic skills are we talking about here?

Is there a link to the curriculum, or anything?

And lets be honest about some of the games we played.

Shadowrun rigger remote design? "Now I take the cube of the remote's intelligence and multiply it by 5000 to determine how many nuyen the computer systems cost."

Megatraveller Starship design? "Crap now I don't have enough volume left to hold all the fuel I would need to use that jump drive."

Herosystem? "With these limitations, I can divide the cost of this power by 4.18"

Would you need at least a 6th grade understanding of math to handle those games?

I remember when I worked at the Science Center I made up a game with the kids in which we made origami sail boats and then had to add vectors (wind, water, the boat's velocity) and use tacking to run a race around the floor. (The center had received and put on display an ornate model ship that had absolutely no scientific educational value, and it annoyed me, so...)

[Onix]

[Onix]