Comments on: Traveller IQ Challenge and Learning

By: barry

barry — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 14:15:29 +0000

I got 114. that’s pretty good, considing that (a) I botched Africa; (b) Indonesia and the Carribean islands are large, and can give very large errors.

By: Rana

Rana — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 06:58:04 +0000

I’m finding it quite addictive too.

What it reveals is fascinating; who knew that I would do so well with Europe and the Middle East, but completely suck at Canada and Africa in general (though I’m good at Egypt).

There’s some other online geography quiz that works better as an educational tool (for one thing, the maps are larger, allowing for more precision); if I remember correctly, it combines things like location, shape of country, part of world, and so on.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 17:05:14 +0000

138 on the Original World Challenge (617, 458 pts.). This morning.

By: lknobel

lknobel — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 16:58:20 +0000

But you haven’t told us what your Traveller IQ is.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 15:00:56 +0000

Heh.

One key thing about this from a game-design standpoint is speed. The pace of the game itself is what allows it to be played over and over again in a very short time frame, which I think is key to what allows it to be a learning tool. The problem with so many “serious” or “learning” games designed by educators to educate is that they miss out on some of these kinds of subtle but essential elements of design, and so often make a leaden, didactic, very unfun sort of game. At which point you might as well call it a test or a lecture and give up the pretense.

So I almost think it’s best to start from the game side and think about the pedagogy secondarily.

By: Laura

Laura — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 11:47:09 +0000

Perhaps the game could be combined with another game or resource that provides more information about places, puts them in historical and political context as well as geographical. Now you’ve given me something to do over break.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 01:27:15 +0000

Yeah, when I don’t know it, I often guess wrong about whether it’s Morocco or Ethiopia. A lot of Amharic place names “sound” a particular way to me, so sometimes I guess right, but sometimes not. Sudan also messes stuff up for me in a few cases.

By: Random African

Random African — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 23:34:33 +0000

North Africa is really a challenge. For one, it’s harder to guess where an unkown place could be from the sound and the spelling of a name. And then there’s the fact that only Morrocco doesn’t have a capital that overshadows the rest of the country. That was also an issue with anything Ethiopia.