Kept coming back for more...

I'm working away tonight on my presentation, fleshing out the details and getting slides ready. Sorry for the lack of formatting on the outline, I tried but I'm blaming Blogger.

I wanted to take a moment to reflect back on the experience of using the U.N. Food Force game during the famine this weekend. We used 2 different components from the Food Force game, "energy pack" and "future farming." Both games were followed by discussions on what they thought and learned by playing. I also used the lesson plan materials provided to help lead the discussion. The feedback by all the students was overwhelmingly positive. I got a lot of "ya, it was pretty good." But the real surprise about how they liked it was that they all kept going back to it in order to get a better score. Some even played around with the other missions and explored more content.

Although we all agreed that the fake Asian accent in the game was in poor taste, everyone was engaged in playing (and re-playing) and discussing afterward. The game and discussion turned out to be a great introduction for the guest speaker who focused on world hunger issues. The game gave them more of a context for what the speaker had to say.

Although the games are targeted at Middle and High School, college students could still get some use out of them. Each mission is brief and creates a good jumping off point for classroom discussion.