Nihon no Okami: A Game to Teach about Japanese History and Worldviews

I have previously posted about a game we found to teach about Japanese history called Warlords of Japan. In grade 8 social studies in Alberta, our curriculum focuses on worldviews and the things that shape them and change them. We do a case study about Japan, focusing on the Edo and Meiji periods to learn about a period of government-imposed isolation and then the subsequent adaptation and modernization sparked by the Americans' forceful demand to Japan's leaders to open their borders to trade.

Warlords was fun, but it was created in the 1990s and its pedagogies aren't current. It also misses big parts of our curricular outcomes, only focusing on the feudal period before isolation. My teaching partner Tara and I decided that we needed to design something more rooted in current best practices in teaching and learning and game-based learning specifically, and more aligned with our curriculum.

We created a game called Nihon no Okami, or Okami for short, which translates to 'Wolves of Japan' (our school's team name is the Grey Wolves, and we often name our games in accordance with that). The game is very loosely based on Warlords of Japan, and shares the area of control Risk-like gameplay elements and the idea of the map with that game. Mostly everything else has been redesigned.

In Okami, students work in groups called goningumi, each of which is assigned a home shiro (castle). The goal of the game is to gain the most territory, develop the best local economy, with the happiest people. This works out to gaining territory in the game, as well as making economic and social improvements to their home shiro. The whole game (which was the entirety of our case study about Japan as it addresses all outcomes in the Program of Studies) takes eight weeks to play. The game changes as the weeks progress, representing the different periods in history: pre-isolation, isolation, civil war, adaptation, and modernization.

The gameboard for Nihon no Okami

Tara and I are open source teachers and want to share this game with anyone who can use it. We have developed a teachers' guide, which will give you the information you need to recreate this game in your classroom, along with links to all resources and handouts. We want you to hack it and make it work in your setting. Our request is simply that you share back what you do so we can learn from you, too. You can find our e-mails in the teachers' guide, or you can comment on this post to share back.

Jars of Koku (a unit of measurement of rice, the currency of Edo Japan) and the currency in Okami

We use principles of game-based learning borrowed from the now-defunct Institute of Play to design all our Social Studies projects:

1. Everyone is a participant
2. Failure is reframed as an iteration
3. Everything is interconnected
4. Learning happens by doing
5. Feedback is immediate and ongoing
6. Challenge is constant
7. Learning feels like play

When using game-based learning in the classroom, two outcomes are important. Firstly, it's important that the game is fun and the students feel invested in the game and in their learning. Secondly, and more importantly, it's important that they learn. We know from research about effective teaching that students must find the work they do intellectually engaging, and "fun activities" don't really cut it. We believe we have created a careful balance here to position the learning in this game as knowledge they need for gameplay, and by connecting this with games, we have deeply connected the learning of history to something that's important in the worlds in which our students live.

In terms of these outcomes, we believe our design has been successful. Our students loved playing this game, and were visibly and audibly engaged in both the game and the learning required by it. We also believe our students have learned a lot. We outline assessment practices in the teachers' guide, and most of our students were demonstrating high levels of achievement through the iterative assessment practices this game involves. 

Two students strategizing

A final note about the competencies games develop. When we play games, we learn skills that are important in school and in life. We learn collaboration, cooperation, sportsmanship, patience, strategy, long-term thinking, if-then thinking, among others. We get opportunities to coach our students on character, citizenship, and personal development. We see our students' humanity shine through. And that's got to be worth something.

Build a Better Board Game: Spanish & Aztec Style

After we did a teacher-created game for our Renaissance case study, we decided to put the game design into the hands of our students for the Aztec and Spanish study. The Aztec and Spanish case study looks at what happens when two worldviews with very different technology, disease, and worldviews collide. In essence, the Aztecs, though they had a dominant empire in the Americas, were slaughtered and effectively eliminated when the Spanish arrived in Central Mexico.

 We started this project by playing games! We were able to buy a bunch of different strategy games for our lunchrooms. We aimed for games with different mechanics but always a level of strategy. Some favourites were Machi Koru, Santorini, Ticket to Ride, Pandemic, Coup, Letters from Whitecastle, and the classic Catan. 

Before we played, we did a quick intro to game theory, so the students would be able to identify things like the core engine, game mechanics, and different kinds of games. My student teacher Adrienne created a notecatcher so they could keep track of the terminology. As they played the games, they worked with a group to identify some of the mechanics and core engines of the games they played. They knew, at this point, that they would be creating their own board game and the purpose of the game play was to learn more about possibilities for their own games. 

We used a modified design thinking process to structure our time for this project. The Discovery/Empathy phase was when they played other games to figure out how games work and what makes them fun (and on the flipside, NOT fun!). Students made many observations during this phase about how the best games are easy to learn and play (they decidedly did NOT enjoy the critically acclaimed game Root, because it was too time consuming to learn to play). They made observations about which rules were easiest to follow. They noticed that games were not fun when people were eliminated because then people are sitting around watching until the game is done, which is boring for them. 

After having played several games (we aimed for each group to play 4 - 6 different games) - we played for a whole week, which felt like a long time, but we really wanted them to have a chance to play many different kinds of games. From here, we had the students work through some brainstorming about their own game, and they filled out a Build A Better Board Game organizer. We were really inspired by the Institute of Play's Gamepack resource, and borrowed pieces of them for our process. This part of the process aligned with the Ideation phase of design thinking frameworks. A note here: the result of the conflict between the Aztec and Spanish was known. We did not want their games to present alternate histories (so, if the Aztec won the wars with the Spanish and the history of the Americas would forever be different), but the Spanish did not have to "win." We talked a lot about how there could be different goals for the Spanish and Aztec players: In some games, the students had the Spanish working towards God, gold, and glory, and the Aztec could be aiming to survive for a certain number of rounds. Others decided to focus on one group only: all the players were Spanish, or all the players were Aztec. As I'm reflecting on this now, there's something uncomfortably colonial about this... and I'm not sure what to do about it.

Anyway, they began prototyping their game following ideation. They used lo-fi materials to prototype in the beginning: paper and pencil. They created paper stand-ins for a board, meeples (did you know the little figures you play with on board games are called meeples?? Until this project, I did not!), cards, and rules. We spent just a couple of days creating these lo-fi models, because after this, we had them do a playtest. Groups switched games with another group, and they tested the games to see if they would work, and to see if they would be fun. They used the Playtest Reflection Template on page 31 of the Institute of Play's Game Design Pack to give the group feedback.

Following this, they iterated based on feedback. They changed rules, worked on the clarity of their rulebook, and altered game mechanics. Then they began working on a hi-fi version of their game. They used all kinds of materials like cardboard, paint, clay to make meeples, and our 3D printer. And then they played each others' games! They used the playtest feedback form once again to give the groups feedback as they played.

As we did with our Renaissance project, we used an assessment sheet to keep track of progress towards outcomes as they were working through this process. We once again wanted students to have opportunities to improve throughout this project, and so re-assessment was possible at any point during the work time they had for their game. I think in future iterations of this project, I would simplify the assessment sheet as it had too much to focus on and made mastery more difficult. 

Though it seems simplistic, the amount of content knowledge the students needed to know in order to make these games was quite astounding. They needed to make it historically accurate, and the outcomes had to reflect what really happened. Being able to create within those creative confines enabled great creativity - as you can see, each game is very different. Project-based learning can tend to go one of two ways: frontload the knowledge, and then have students create something to prove they know it, OR craft a performance task that gives the students a reason to find out the knowledge. The second type of project are the kinds I tend to gravitate towards. It works! This project proves that it does!

Resources Shared in this Post:

• Slidedeck Intro to Game Theory with Notecatcher
• "Move Your Meeple" Organizer for Gameplay of Professionally-made Games
• "Build a Better Board Game" Ideation Sheet
• Institute of Play's Game Design Gamepack
• "Everything is Awesome" Assessment Sheet

This project was co-designed with Tara.

Do They Need to Know the Seven Strands?

Posted by Erin Quinn

I taught an option class to my grade sevens last term called Creative Problem Solving. I decided to focus on games and play - a great move, because my students loved this class so much. It was one of those delightful times when they were learning a lot without really even knowing they were learning.

We started with The Institute of Play's Gamekit. The term's work took them through three projects, all having to do with games.

Warm Up: Find Play in Things

I gave them plastic cups, elastic bands, tokens, paper clips, and yarn, and they had to choose three items and invent a game.

Hack a Board Game

I pilfered my local second hand store for board games and came back with a bunch. They worked in groups, chose one, and had to think of new ways to play. They had to hack the rules, and invent a new game, using the pieces from an existing game.

Caine's Arcade

We watched Caine's Arcade. It was just beautiful how this happened. After it was over, I asked "What did you think?" And the kids shared how awesome it was, and how great Caine's contraptions were, and how fun it looked. And then, innocently, a student asked, "Can we make a cardboard arcade?" Oh glorious day! Such a question! So off we went.

This was the major project of the term, and the one that took the most time. We put an all call out for cardboard, and had a storage room full of it in no time to work with. The students created a wide variety of games, some invented and some borrowed: skee ball, Plinko, coin dozer, basketball, ring toss.

When they finished building their arcade games, and testing them, then we added an element of social innovation to the project. We held our cardboard arcade at lunch one day and invited the school to come and play. Each turn was a quarter, with all proceeds donated to our school's Me to We Club, who is trying to raise $10,000 to build a school in Ghana. And in that process, the students had an authentic audience for their work.

I Never Once Mentioned the Strands

Throughout all three of these activities, the students experienced all seven strands of creative development. They collaborated with each other. They self-instigated their own ideas - they made decisions that were motivating and relevant to them. They investigated ideas and sought inspiration for their ideas from different sources. They generated. Oh did they generate! And they experimented. Prototyping ideas happened a lot. Their planning for their games tended to take this form: try out an idea to see if it will work. I encouraged this; I did not put the pressure on that their games had to be "finished" within a class period, giving them freedom to test ideas and not feel a time crunch if their ideas didn't work. I encouraged them to try new solutions to the problems they had in their game design and creation. Through this process, they analyzed their ideas to find the best one. And they absolutely reached creative sustain. While they were working on their arcade games, they would come to class, drag out their arcade game in progress, and get right to work. They didn't need to ask me what to do, they just did it. This sustained them creatively for weeks.

Although they experienced the seven strands, I didn't stop them to talk about them. I made the decision that they needed to just play, rather than hearing me talk about this. This was an experiement on my part. I wanted to see if they would experience the strands even without knowing what to call them. It worked.

Moral of the Story

Don't stress about how you are going to communicate the creative process to your students. Set them up so they will experience it. If you teach grade 1, are they going to understand what "Creative Sustain" means? Nope. But will they love the feeling when they're immersed in a creative project? Absolutely.

Curricular Obligations in the Creative Classroom

or How Do You Uncover 400 Years of History in 10 Months?

By Erin Quinn

One of the biggest struggles for a creative teacher is balancing the demands of packed curriculums with the desire to provide time and space for student creativity. I teach grade 7 Language Arts and Social Studies. Language Arts is no problem - it lends itself quite well to creative pursuits. But the grade 7 Social Studies curriculum is a beast of a curriculum. It focuses on pre- and post-Confederation Canadian history, basically spanning the years from 1600 to the mid 20th century. Pretty big for eleven-year-olds to swallow.

This past summer, I sorted the curriculum into Googleable and Non-Googleable outcomes, and discovered that the majority of the content objectives involved lower level thinking skills. Specific outcomes like, “What factors led to Louis Riel’s emergence as the leader of the Métis?” or “What was the role and intent of Chief Pontiac in controlling British forts?” could be handled in a classroom in a way that does not promote creative and critical thinking skills. Look it up in a textbook. Google it. Answer it on a multiple choice test. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

In jumping into this curriculum, my team teachers and I wanted to start with a project that would allow students to spend a bit of time on the context of the curriculum. Really, the crux of the curriculum, as with most history, is “Who are we and how did we get here?” Put in another way, “What changes have occurred in Canada over the past four centuries, and why? And how do these changes impact us?” So we wanted to focus on present-day Canada for a bit to take a look at where we are now.

The Game of Canada

We started with the idea of doing some centres focused on different aspects of Canada today, and concepts that would underlie students’ understanding of being able to understand what has changed from 1600 to present. This went through a few iterations, but then I stumbled upon Q Learning from the Institute of Play. I knew about gamification of learning before, but hadn’t tried it, and the design packs from Q Learning really helped me wrap my brain around it. In a nutshell, gamification is applying concepts from game mechanics to non-game situations. To be clear, it is not using games in learning - that’s a totally different thing altogether.

I had spent the first couple of weeks of school learning about who these kids were, and knew many of them considered themselves gamers. So, I gamified the project. Each centre was turned into a quest. Students would be working in Guilds, and would create an identity for their guild by making a coat of arms and a motto. They would work cooperatively to learn together.

Some of the coats of arms with the badges they earned.

Teaching Like a Pirate

And here’s something silly but something profound. In order to permit your students from taking risks in learning, you need to do it too. This was one of my main takeaways from the short, but infinitely inspiring book by Dave Burgess called Teach Like a Pirate. So guess what I did? Called myself the QuestMaster and donned a cape. Whenever we are working on the quests, I am wearing my cape. Let me tell you, I have gotten plenty of strange looks in the hallway. And a million people have asked, “Ms. Quinn, why are you wearing a cape?” to which I reply, “Why not?!” But who cares? I’m doing this to give my students permission to do it too. I’m laying the building blocks that will allow for creative risk taking as our year progresses.

Me as the QuestMaster.

Gamification of Assessment

It just so happens that this project aligned quite well with my school’s current shift towards outcome-based assessment. Some of the actual quests do not really require creative skills. Looking at the three types of creative learning designs, some of the quests would qualify as Type 1 activities: skill and knowledge acquisition, such as the map quest and reading a news article about a significant Canadian story. Some are Type 2 activities, like redesigning the Canadian flag to reflect its modern identity, and writing/filming/drawing the story of an explorer coming to Canada. Both these types of tasks are necessary. I think the beauty of these quests, though, lie in their assessment. I pulled curricular outcomes from the curricular document and translated them into kid friendly “I can statements.” For example, “I can examine different ideas and points of view expressed in a media message,” or “I can choose symbols that represent Canada and support my choices with research.”

The Genius of Angry Birds

When the guild thinks they are ready and have achieved the outcomes for the quest, they call me over and we have a look. We discuss the learning and notice where evidence of the outcome is. Through discussion, we come up with a number of stars out the possible three. This gamification concept may be familiar to you if you’ve ever played Angry Birds:

In Angry Birds, it is possible to pass a level if you get one star out of three. But you can also go back and replay the level to earn more stars. Likewise, with the quests, students can choose whether they’d like to continue working on a quest to improve it, or move on to the next one. What’s been really surprising for me to see is how many guilds opt to go back and try again. I’d say probably 80% of guilds who get less than three stars go back to improve it.

Mastery of Learning

This scenario probably sounds familiar to you: In the past when I was younger and greener, I would assign students a writing assignment, take it in, mark it, give it back, and give them the opportunity to improve it to hand in for a better mark. Maybe one or two kids would take me up on this offer. This is a good step on the right path towards encouraging mastery of learning, but the way these quests are assessed has been so much better. In reflection, I think there’s a few differences between the way the quests are assessed and the hypothetical redo of a writing assignment. First, the gamification aspect gives kids an entry point that is familiar and fun to them. Second, and I can’t stress this enough: conversation is the most powerful form of assessment. Through conversation, I have a clear idea who knows what they’re talking about and who doesn’t. I scribble as they talk and write down evidence of learning. For some guilds, we quickly run into our dead end. The assessment conversation sometimes ends up being quite short the first time because it is obvious that the students aren’t ready to be assessed yet. They go back and try again. Third, specific, clear feedback was given during these chats. I told (and wrote) the guilds exactly what they needed to still learn to earn more stars, and the feedback was immediate. They didn’t have to go home, read what I wrote, improve their essay or story on their own time, and take the time to hand it back in.

And the end result of this 80% re-attempt at learning? Mastery. Better learning. Persistence, grit. High levels of achievement across the whole class. Who wouldn’t want that?!

This type of assessment would lend itself extremely well to type 2 and 3 tasks as well. In fact, the last quest of the game is called Boss Level. The instructions are quite simple, “Create something to show your understanding of the Big Question: “What does it mean to be Canadian?” Students will use their learning from the quests to help them formulate an answer to this question and create something, anything, that shows their ideas about this question. We’re veering into Type 3 territory here, since students will need to apply the creative process in order to create something new and answer a significant, open ended question.

Creativity Breeds Creativity

So now we come back to the topic of this article: how does a teacher in a heavy-content area allow for creativity in the classroom? Maybe I’m oversimplifying here, but it really just involves being creative yourself. Looking at your curriculum with a creative eye will allow for a project like this one, one where kids have fun learning content as well as important creative and higher level thinking skills.

Downloads

Please feel free to download the assignment and assessment sheets.

The Game of Canada.pdf
The Game of Canada - Assessment