Saturday 4 August 2012

Comment: Gamebooks Can Be a Vital Learning Tool

Right now in London, Ian Livingstone will be setting out his table and stacks of Blood of the Zombies, ready to greet a parade of fresh-faced young kids and grizzled Fighting Fantasy veterans who shiver at the word 'Ganjees'. Now gamebooks are hot again, thanks to tablets and iPhones, the original series is back in the spotlight and a new wave of gamers are tasting the delights of chucking magic powder at Zanbar Bone.

A friend of mine and member of my gaming group is a teacher who once mentioned to be that he used Fighting Fantasy in the classroom. This is a brilliant idea and I propose every teacher adds it to their class at some point, and here's why. Fighting Fantasy relies on reading comprehension, mathematics and problem-solving - everything that a child should learn, but in an exciting way. Say you're wanting to teach about probability, FF has you covered. The kids have a LUCK score of 7 and they have to roll 7 or under to avoid being turned to stone by a basilisk, so they must work out the probability of rolling that number or lower. Simple addition and subtraction is used in combat, so instead of giving them a tired old "how many beans does Janine have?" pit them against a cockatrice. Have one of the kids read out the passage depending on the outcome.

Steve Jackson, the series' co-founder, actually invented a great downloadable teaching aid that works a lot like this. It gets pupils writing lengthy descriptions of their favourite monsters and even tests their artistic abilities with creature drawings.

Few things fire up a child's imagination like fantasy and the best form of learning is when you don't even realise you're learning - it's all integrated into something incredibly fun. Maybe we will even teach a whole new generation how to destroy Zanbar Bone.


6 comments:

  1. I love FF! I got into them as a young lad, and I'm still looking forward to this latest edition. Great idea about using them in classrooms; I work in a book shop and always recommend them to parents looking for books to get their kids reading when they usually wouldn't pick up a book. It's a great way to promote literacy, and I've never thought about all the other stuff you need to figure out while playing.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Sounds like you're doing your part to keep gamebooks alive - well done!

      Delete
  2. As a teacher, I agree. If I have time, I will write an educational gamebooks.

    A little known fact is that the first 'gamebooks' were educational - they were programmed learning books. However, they are a bit too dry to be described as having a gaming element to them.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamebook#History

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As always, you're full of awesome nuggets of information!

      Delete
  3. I love this idea. Something I'd like to think about in the future is how to write a gamebook-format piece that is specifically designed to be used in the classroom. You can't go too "educational" with it, or it wouldn't be fun, but it also would be good to make it a little more deliberate than the original FF games are.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Heck, I might try to persuade Ken to come up with a line of T&T modules specifically for the classroom. Tunnels & Teachers ;)

      Delete