Gaming the Past

Very excited to introduce the Cincinnati Country Day School (CCDS on Facebook; ) 9th graders to Design Lab on Monday at the Ninth Grade retreat. For those just tuning in, here’s the nutshell. All of our ninth graders will collaborate in small groups to research and design a boardgame on a contemporary modern world issue/problem (we have selected a set for this year and provided research tools and guidance. Students will rank their top three choices from the six issues and be grouped into teams of 2-3 based on those choices. Three is our optimal size, but of course, classes don’t always divide neatly and the team felt that groups of 2 were better than groups of 4 — with groups of 4, one or more students can drift more. The current topics:

• Scarcity of Water, Water Needs, Water Issues
• Affordable and Adequate Housing
• Migration, Immigration, and Refugees
• Bullying and School Communities
• Mental Health and Well-Being for Adolescents
• Generative AI and LLMS, Human Impacts and Sustainability

We aimed for issues that felt important for us, were appropriate for ninth and sixth graders, and offered some variety for student interests.

The boardgame will be designed using the Historical / Agential Problem Space Framework for game design that I have written about for years and apply to game design in the now-out Designing Historical Games for Classrooms: A Practical Guide for Educators. As the groups learn essential skills for research, collaboration, and game design, they will also develop Makerspace skills under the expert guidance of Jamie Back and develop their skills at presentation. Note the focus on skills: this Design Lab is about the process, about developing future durable skills that will serve the kids in life, high school, and college.

When they have finished designing and engineering the board game, they will give a presentation on the real world topic and their game-based analysis to our 6th graders and have them play the games and provide critical feedback, an empowering moment for 6th and a great vertical connection to make between our Upper and Middle Schools!

Okay, back to the present entry. I’ve drafted a brief guide for our ninth graders and the teachers helping them that I plan to add to over time. Here’s the cover page with a graphic by a terrific current 12th grader at Cincinnati Country Day School!!! The core, of course, is the Agential Problem Space Framework (or as I term it in this manual to be more approachable for ninth-graders–who generally have little experience with boardgames outside of Candyland, Monopoly, and Sorry— Agent-Based Problem Spaces).

This all derives from my new book on historical game design, Designing Historical Games for Classrooms: A Practical Guide for Educators (see the link above). The core difference: rather than games about the past, students are researching and designing Agent-Based boardgames about a chosen modern issue (there is a set of 6 in this handbook and students will rank their top three and be assigned to collaborative research and design groups based on their choices)

I will plan on having a brief running journal on Linked In, about the work we do throughout the year. Please remember, if you are in the SW Ohio region, I will be leading a workshop on how to do this powerful and engaging work of agency in systems at Cincinnati Country Day School on October 3rd. Check my featured post list for flyer and registration (LinkedIn announcement of workshop Gaming the Past, Present, and Future). You even get a copy of the book for the $20 registration. Would love to see you all there!

(Design Lab Diary #2)