This document discusses using board games and game design activities to teach programming and develop students' logic and strategic thinking skills. It proposes using the LOGO programming language to have students implement simple board games, describing how LOGO is well-suited for this as it allows drawing game boards and modeling game play. Examples are provided of maze and dice games created by 12-year-old students in Greece using LOGO. The document argues these activities integrate well into the informatics curriculum and that LOGO-based environments could better engage young learners if adapted for touch technologies.

1. Maria Skiadelli
ICT and Informatics Teacher
Constructionism 2012
Athens, 22/8/2012
*

2. *
A board game is a game that involves counters
or pieces moved or placed on a pre-marked
surface or "board", according to a set of rules.
Games can be based on pure strategy, chance
(e.g. rolling dice) or a mixture of the two, and
usually have a goal which a player aims to
achieve.
*Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Board_game

3. *
Board Games that are implemented as software
products and can be played on a computer.
A special category of computer games
Compared with other computer game categories
they offer:
*Simple rules while playing
*Easiness of implementation
*Face to face interaction between humans
*Enhance strategic skills and logic instead of
reflex

4. *
*Y. Kafai in her article “Playing and Making Games for
Learning” says:
“Rather than embedding “lessons” directly in games,
constructionists have focused their efforts on
providing students with greater opportunities to
construct their own games—and to construct new
relationships with knowledge in the process”.
*Remember Seymour Papert‘s popular saying:
“…learning …happens especially felicitously in a
context where the learner is consciously engaged in
constructing a public entity.”

5. *
*One has to find meaningful activities that are easy to
be implemented by the young and/or novice learners in
short time.
*Kids get easily frustrated if they don’t get tangible
results. Their patience is running out very fast.
*Computer games are difficult to implement; they need a
lot of effort, time and programming experience of a
superior level.
*So one has to find activities that are fun, playful and
rewarding.

6. *
*The dynamic nature of the game is enhanced
*Either the rules can change or the board can change or
both.
*Various playing situations may occur by just changing a
few parameters
*“Game-making activities offer an entry point for
young gamers into the digital culture not just as
consumers but also as producers ” (Kafai Y.,
2001)

7. *
LOGO offers certain advantages both for
implementing and for playing
*It is interpreted, that means that a game is not
only built programmatically, but can be also played
programmatically
*For a player moving a piece on the board is achieved
by giving the right moving instructions to a
turtle
*It has the inherent advantage of drawing lines as
traces left by the turtles while moving. That makes
quite simple and straightforward the process of
drawing the board of the game.

8. *
*Children and/or novice programmers have to follow certain
steps indicated by the educational scenario. The
scenario has 3 phases:
o1st: designing the game
o2nd: Implementing the game
o3rd: testing and playing
*Each phase is further divided in more detailed steps given to
students as instructions
*Notice the similarity to the software engineering cycle

9. *
*Define your theme
*Make choices about the aesthetics
*Design the board
*Make the rules and the scenario
*Test and play the game
*Explain to others how to play your game
*Play other pupils’ games and make comments
*Improve your game according to comments and ideas
from other peers

10. *
*Acquire basic programming skills and digital fluency
(important for the ICT curriculum)
*Improve strategic skills and reasoning through
coming up with their own set of rules : who wins,
what a player should do when he/she takes turn
*Develop their creativity and imagination thinking
about the theme, the scenario, the aesthetics of
their game
*Enhance good-fellowship and camaraderie due to the
multiplayer nature of most of the games

11. *

12. *
The board
paint 3
forward 6
forward 4
forward 6
left 90
forward 3
left 90
forward 8
The dice

13. *
The board
The dice

14. *
paint 0
pen colour = red
paint 1
forward 4 with pen up
pen colour = green
paint 1
right 90
forward 4 with pen up
left 90
pen colour = red
paint 1
forward 4 with pen up
pen colour = green
paint 1
right 90
forward 4 with pen up
left 90
pen colour = red
paint 1

15. *
The maze game is played by
two players.
One player builds the
game and the other has to
get out of it. One can also
put a time restriction to
make the game more
challenging.
What makes this
Implementation interesting
is that the maze
is created programmatically
and therefore each time can
be drawn in a different way
by just changing a few
parameters.

16. *
Children who developed those IB games were pupils of the
6th grade (~12 years old) of a public primary school
and it was their second consecutive year with LOGO
programming.
In the first year during a 4 weeks period (2 hours per
week) they learned how to use the environment and the
repertoire of all the basic LOGO commands (8 in total)
In the second year they had another 4 weeks period of
LOGO programming and they learned how to implement IB
games

17. *Younger children (8-10 years old) acquired basic
programming skills by just playing even simpler
IB games

18. *
*Easy Logo is a LOGO based programming environment very
easy and simple to learn and handle
*It is meant to be used by children or/and novice
programmers
*Has a limited set of LOGO commands (~10) and supports
procedures, randomness and repetition
*Drawbacks: there is only one turtle, there are no variables
and no conditional branching

19. *
*Board Games need to be re-invented in a computerized
environment, because it’s fun, easy to play, enhance
collaboration, logic and strategic skills.
*On-line board games can be interactive,
parametrisable and offer a rich game experience to their
players
*ICT and informatics curriculum can be
enriched by the integration of board game building and
playing activities, especially in primary education
*The LOGO language offers certain advantages for
implementing such activities in classroom, even for
younger children (6-9 years old). The results would be
even better if the LOGO based environments took
advantage of the new touch screen technologies
available on mobile phones, tablet pcs, etc.

20. *
*Many Thanks
to all of you!!!