Do we take shelter - Playtest
Goals
This week, we will playtest Do we take shelter? – a Reacting to the Past inspired mini-game asking students to play as residents of Manchester in 1940. You must use the information available to you and your family to decide when to travel to a bomb shelter to take refuge from German bombs.
Our goals for the playtest is:
to experience a pedagogical History role playing game
to evaluate whether the game succeeds in its objectives (teach information literacy)
to offer constructive criticism to the game designer about changes (large and small) that would improve the pedagogical intent and the gameplay.
During gameplay, students should jot down notes to refer back to, for the discussion in the following class.
Read/Watch/Listen
In advance of the class, the designer (Martha Attridge Bufton) will enroll students in a sandboxed Brightspace instance. Access to game materials and supplemental materials will be available there. Students will be required to read:
The Player Manual: https://ecampusontario.pressbooks.pub/gamerguidedowetakeshelter/
Martha will assign each student a character. She will send this directly to the student.
British Pathé newsreels (approximately 9 minutes)
The war (1940) (3:03 minutes)
Battle of Britain (1940) (2:39 minutes)
Your Anderson air raid shelter (2:15 minutes)
What to do during an air raid (.55 minutes)
BBC radio broadcasts (approximately 9 minutes)
King George VI speaks to the nation on September 3, 1939 (5.44 minutes)
The midnight news, September 15, 1940 (1:41 minutes)
Princess Elizabeth broadcast (2:05 minutes).
Government information
World War II Radio: Listen to Track 8 (air raid shelters, approximately .44 minutes)
Winston Churchill, November 1939 (9:26 minutes)
Winston Churchill, September 1940 (10:41 minutes)
Film: British Ministry of Information (15 minutes)
Going Further
Fullerton, Tracy. Game Design Workshop : A Playcentric Approach to Creating Innovative Games. 3rd edition., CRC Press, 2014. (Library) Fourth edition posted on Teams/Obsidian.
Read chapter 9. Playtesting.
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