Cool+School

=**Eliane's Educational Game Review**=
 * //(4 points)// A brief description of the game. You may include images or even video clips to help give readers a better idea of the game.
 * //(5 points)// The kinds of learning involved (i.e. What specifically did you learn from playing the game?). Think about the game tasks, objectives, terminology, etc. What skills did you need to learn to be successful at the game? Note that many 'educational' games don't actually teach new content area skills, but rather allow students to practice skills they've already learned elsewhere.
 * //(5 points)// The kinds of teaching involved (i.e. How did the game teach you?). Think about the kinds of feedback, rewards, guidance, and information the game gave you, and how it paced and structured your learning. Which Principles of Learning did the game utilize?
 * //(6 points)// Your overall reflections on playing the game. How might a teacher use the game in their curriculum?

=Game Description:= This game is an interactive online game that focuses on solving conflicts presented in different school settings such as the gym, classroom, music room, art room, library, etc. It is targeted for elementary students from Kinder to 2nd grade. The game walks through 52 different scenarios demonstrating the common issues students face with one another and how to successful make the right choice to produce conflict resolution skills. At least 26 scenarios are to be processed through to complete the game, while completing the alphabet chart as a part of the game tasks. The game player chooses a map location within a school setting and a conflict is presneted through use of cartooned talking school materials. After the conflict is presented a list of choices to solve the conflict are shown and the player has to choose one. Conflicts revolve mostly around the topics of sharing and bullying. Based on what is chosen will result in the after effect of what happens. The player is allowed to choose as many times as they need before getting the correct answer. The aim is to get the correct answer the first time around, but will give more chances if the player can't. The goal of this game is demonstrate how not to fight and to solve conflicts successfuly by modeling different conflicts and behaviors and how to solve them. This game defanitly allows the player to practice what they have been taught by possibly a counslor at school and without the fear of faliure of making the wrong choice. =Learning Involved:= What I learned by playing this game is the importance of choices. Based upon certain situations and how we react to them will determine the next step of how the situation ends. The best part of this game is that it is 'real life' situation based. The tasks of the game were to reason out the best decision and reaction to the situation represented. This is constantly an issue for students, to know how to effectively deal with conflict and be able to socially interact with one another. By completing these tasks of choosing the right answers the player would then be rewarded with a trophy and certificate, making them closer to completing the game. This game does a great job of incorroporating real life situations that students, especially elementary, go through today. By providing them the tools to successfuly avoid conflict or how to get themselves out of a bad situation will help them in the long run. The skills needed for this game is based on decision chooses and even if the incorrect answer was chosen, there would still be opportunities to chose again and a given explanation of why they answer was the best fit would beg given.

=Teaching Involved:= The game teaches the players the important of healthy relationships and how to deal with conflict resolution. By successfuly choosing the right answer the player would then be reward in the game with trophies, certificates, and a letter of the alphabet on the wall. The objective of the game was to collect all the alphabet letters and to do that the player would need to at least choose 26 correct conflict responses. The motivation factor in the game was trying to collect all the rewards and letters in the game, in addition to the trash can stating that the player wouldn't be successful. It paced and structured the learning so that players could choose only so many conflicts within a certain location of the school and to experience how conflict can happen in different locations and ways.

Principals of learning
All aspects of the learning environment (including the ways in which the semiotic domain is designed and presented) are set up to encourage active and critical, not passive, learning //I believe the game showed this principle because it made the player think critically about the choses that were being made. If the wrong choice was given they would have to pick again, so in order to avoid that the player has to rationalize what the best answer would be.// Learners can take risks in a space where real-world consquences are lowered //If this were real life situations students would probably react different, but this game allows a safe environment were students can explore opition of what they would do if a conflict arose// Learning invloves taking on and playing with identities in such a way that the learner has real choices (in deveoping the virtual identity) and ample opportunity to mediate on the relationship between new identities and old ones. There is a triparirte play of identities as learners relate, and reflect on, their multiple real-world identities, a virtual identity, and a projective identity //The player in this game has to take on the identity of the person that is in the conflict and choose how they should react. These are real life choices, but all done in a safe environment where the student can experiment with the different options. They can use this game identity to reflect on how their real world identity would take place and react.// Learning invloves active and critical thinking about the relationships of the semiotic domain being learned to other semiotic domains //I believe this prinicple goes along with the Active, Critical Learning Principle in the fact that the player has to critically think about the choses they are given and choose the best answer. In addition, this principle forces the player to think critically about not only the choice made, but the effect on the relationship of the other people involved in the conflict.// Learners are given ample opportunity to practice, and support for, transferring what they have learned earlier to later problems, including problems that require adapting and transforming that earlier learning //This whole game is constant practice after practice of different conflict resolution strategies that a player has to work through and can eventually master with all the practice given. Some of the circumstances in the game bounce off each other and help solve later conflicting issue presented.// =Online Sites:= Website: [] Additional Website: []
 * Active, Critical Learning Principle:
 * "Psychosocial Moratorium" Principle:
 * Identity Principle:
 * Metalevel Thinking about Semoiotic Domain Principle:
 * Transfer Principle:

=Overall Reflection:= This game is a great tool for online skill building for conflict resolution situations. Students have the ability to interact and make choices, but also be guided to the right answer. This is basically what a school counslor does in the form of a physical teacher in the classroom. This would be a great additional aspect to any classroom because teachers know that we aren't just teaching content material, but also social interaction skills and how to respectfully work with one another. This tool will help social interactions in the classroom because students will be more proned on working with a wide diverse range of other students will less conflict. The main downfall was that it took awhile to 'beat' the game because of all the different scenarios the player has to encounter first. However, the game did allow you to save and come back to the spot you left off. I do agree that students need a lot of exposure in order to truly understand and master a concept. I would defanitly use it in my classroom to help my students solve conflict issues and better themselves at making the appropriate choices. Therefore I could truly and fully focus on just teaching content material and not how 'Sam' is bothering 'Tim' the whole time or how 'Betty' is being mean to 'Rachel'.