Abstract:

“The best school day ever” was the term used by the children in 5th and 7th graders in elementary school after a day of pervasive game playing in school. They hardly noticed the learning when playing, but tests after the game reveled through knowledge acquiring in Sustainability and System Thinking. The project was conducted in 2013 Hedmark University College in Norway. The task was simple; game development students in a System Thinking course was asked to developed and test a Pervasive Game for teaching Sustainability and Systems Thinking to children in elementary school. The overall game goal was to “sneak in” learning while the children was having fun. The was tested on 5th and 7th graders in elementary school, spending one school day in each of the classes. The presentation and the articles focus on two aspects of the project; firstly the development process done by the university students, and secondly the game days in the elementary school where children played the game and named the day “the best school day ever". In the presentation we introduce relevant theory and learning goals and discuss the development and the playing process. Finally we discuss findings and conclusions.

Pervasive games is an emerging genre of games, blending the real world and games in new and exciting ways. Although they have previously been used successfully for marketing campaigns, they have many properties that will make them well suited for learning. They do, for example, facilitate collaboration, learning just in time, and creative problem solving. In addition, they provide a natural context for the tasks they have to solve, and the content they have to learn. Systems thinking is based on seeing causalities and causal connections between different variables, and understanding how different components in the world are connected to make a dynamic system. Systems Thinking is an important part of the K12 curriculum in the United States, and has successfully been used together with games in the New York-based Quest to Learn school. Sustainability is the capacity of the Earth to continue supporting human life, and is an important part of the Norwegian elementary school curriculum. For this project, we collaborated with the PERL Network, or Partnership for Education on Responsible Living. The Learning Goals were taken from the Norwegian Core Curriculum and Subject Curricula.

Keywords:

Games and Learning, Pervasive Games, Sustainability, Systems Thinking.