Transform+It!

**Transform It!**
Description:

A description of the game from the JASON website:
"From plants last photosynthesizing millions of years ago to the planes, trains, and (of course) robots in our lives--energy transfers and transforms throughout the universe. Transform It! invites players to harness energy in its various forms to put a city, a giant robot or a farm to work. Deliver energy efficiently, and avoid under-powering or overpowering your goal! Transform It! invites players to harness energy in its various forms to put a city, a giant robot or a farm to work. Deliver energy efficiently, and avoid under-powering or overpowering your goal!" The basic premise of the game is to see if you can figure out the most efficient way to power different aspects of a city or farm. You get a few choices on types of energy sources you'd like to use, but they have to be compatible with the thing you're trying to power as well as create enough energy for the item. For instance, one of the things you can choose to power on the farm is humans for human labor. You may use an apple (food) to power a human, but that wouldn't work for powering the tractor for instance.

There are many different types of energy you can use, including wind turbines, nuclear energy, dams, etc. You pick the one you want to use and then you have to generate energy by "running" certain things. Once you are done getting your energy you have to supply to your consumer. Sometimes that means using a generator. The generator was the most difficult thing to run and I spent quite some time figuring out how to run it.

Its not the most advanced game, but it got kind of addicting until I could master it, so I would say it was an effective game.

Teaching: At any time, you can request more information about how something works so that you can run it better. I had to read and reread the generator info and that is probably what I learned the most about in the end. For some reason it was the most difficult for me to figure out how to run, and I didn't read the info first, but after I got frustrated and couldn't ever power my city's lights, I had to go back and read to help me figure out what needed to be done. You could also redo a specific power option over and over until you got it right. I never really figured out how the points system worked, but you did get points if you got it to work correctly and if you used the correct amount of energy without wasting too much I think you got bonus points. The best part was the effects when you got your item powered - fireworks and clapping. But if you failed to power your item, you would hear a sad little tune.

Learning Principles:
 * Explicit Information on Demand - you could click for more info at anytime.
 * Practice Principle - you could practice over and over without penalty until you got it right
 * Active, Critical Learning Principle - you had to actually jump right in and run the items in order to power things.
 * Semiotic Domain - you are definitely learning about different types of electricity and each type has explicit explanations
 * Multiple Routes - there are multiple ways to power each item
 * Discovery - you jump right in and only use the info as needed

Reflections: I think this could be a really interesting teaching tool if you were trying to teach vocabulary around energy or even just to get students to understand some of the basic principles of energy use. I can see this as a preliminary science activity before a unit dealing with specific types of energy.

I tried a few different games and none of them caught my attention until this one. I think it had to do with fact that you could jump in and immediately see your results when you tried to power something up. It was quick, yet it let me try again and again without penalty until I could get it right. There was a lot of immediate feedback and that was nice.

I can't say I'm going to spend lots of time playing this game, but you never know. I mean, I had //almost// figured out how to power the airport!! I might have to go back and see if I can get those planes off the ground. :)