Make a boardgame

Title of the activity Make a boardgame
Teachers/Schools/Country Denmark, Vejle Midtbyskole. Jan Sommer Vind
Age of the students 13-14
class Danish
Topic of the activity quality education
Description of the activity This project is about making the students aware about witch things they find challenging in the Danish language, it’s also applicable in other contexts.

The way the students work with this is by inventing their own board game. There are demands towards the design, were they have to use technologies like 3D print and laser cutter.

Besides getting knowledge in what they find challenging in the language, the students will be working with transforming ideas on paper into tangible objects like the pieces for the game, and also the actual board itself. They have to use software to shape their ideas and gain knowledge about the materials they use in the different machines.

All of this is only possible, if the group can agree on making compromises and join their innovative skills into one idea about how to play the game. Among other things, they have to examine different board games to learn how different the game play can be, this will take place in what’s called the field study. Later on, in the process they will be forced to get a lot of ideas about how to play the game in different ways, so the group have original ideas to build their own game on. They then have to turn their ideas into tangible objects with digital technology.

How did it go

Lack of knowledge about how a board game works has given the students challenges in designing a game. Another challenge is that the students are uncertain about creating their own ideas. They mostly ensure when they copy something they think others think is good.

They use Tinkercad to create 3D pieces for the game and RDworks program to design the game board. 

Some reflections from students/teachers

Exciting and a little hard to find on ideas

Fun to do something for the 3D printer

Hard to get to know new programs

nice to work together on something

Challenging to find questions that make it fun playing our games

I had to raise awareness of board games by spending time playing board games.

It is frustrating to see students having trouble finding solutions and not contribute with suggestions, but only supporting the students own process.