A public wifi network at the Museum is on the way – hooray! – and the prototype real-time multi-player iPad game is so very nearly ready for testing with real kids. We now have a web page introducing the game but I am conscious that teachers will need and want to know more about what’s involved in playing this thing called Sembl in order to plan their visit and to optimise their students’ learning, so for me this post is a prelude to sketching out a pre-visit tutorial for teachers.
I’m hoping that players will experience the game as an intriguing, delightful adventure. At this stage – prototyping! – there may be extra intrigue of the unintended variety – ‘Why is this screen frozen?’ – so I figure if there is any delight at all we will have succeeded. My thinking is that it should be possible to go in cold to the game, find your way – with your teammates :) – and develop strategies as you go. And I’m keen to test the game on those terms, so I’m inclined not to reveal much detail about the interface design, game mechanics or trajectory. (Those keen to know more may find it on this blog, here and there.)
The secret
One thing all players do need to know up-front is that the secret to Sembl is the idea of resemblance. To play the game is to practise playing with this idea – and as a by-product, to find meaning in things on display at the Museum. In the game, you assemble things onto a board…
Each circle is a thing; each line is a resemblance.
…to create and show their resemblance. You assemble resemblance!
Contenders deemed by all teams to be the most interesting win a place on the board, and points for the team that created it.
Assembled resemblance – a sampler
Looking at some object juxtapositions is a good way to think through the idea of resemblance. It can enable kids as young as 10 to spot a relationship between a branding iron and an Aboriginal breastplate.
Convict leg irons / Welsh organ
Two of the above-mentioned kids crafted a resemblance between convict leg irons and a Welsh organ, which won them a game. (Onya, Bella and Alcuin :)
Can you guess?
Convict leg irons / Welsh organ
Keys are key to their function.
(Having watched a BBC production of Dickens’ Great Expectations the other week, I now wonder if this connection is false: in the story, Pip’s guardian, a blacksmith, was required to solder together an excaped convict’s leg irons. In any case, it’s still a winning link.)
Dingo trap / Batman land deed
On the left is a dingo trap; on the right, the John Batman land deed signed in 1835 by Kulin Aboriginal ‘chiefs’, about land around Port Phillip.
What is their resemblance?
Dingo trap / detail of the land deed signed for John Batman by Kulin 'chiefs'
Both served the colonial Australian mission to control land. More particularly, both operate as a device to secure something – on the one hand, access to land; on the other, animals who threatened to kill livestock. Both close – the trap on dingoes; the deed a deal.
Dog sculpture / dog collar
On the left is Larry LaTrobe; on the right is a collar belonging to Nelson the Newfoundland, recently acquired by the National Museum.
How are they similar?
Bronze sculpture of a dog / dog collar
Both are metal, and there is an obvious (synecdochical!) connection here of the spiked dog collar, which can stand for the whole dog. But there is another connection between these two things that is easily found by following the above links. Go find out!
Or, ok, look here.Both Larry and Nelson are much celebrated dogs – you might even say heroes – of Swanston St, Melbourne. You really should read both those links. Great stories surround both dogs.
Levelling up: 3-way resemblance – dog sculpture / dog collar / windmill
Once you are familiar with the practice of assembling two things, you can ‘level up’ by adding a third thing to an assemblage-of-two. Let’s try taking the dog sculpture / dog collar, and adding the windmill now on display in the Museum’s Landmarks gallery.
In what way do the windmill and the collar resemble one another?
Windmill / dog collar
Their form is similar: circular metal with radial protrusions. It’s a simple connection, made more interesting by the difference in scale.
In what way do the sculpture and the windmill resemble one another?
Dog sculpture / windmill
Again here you need to do some background reading, but it’s not hard to
Discover...Both were transplanted to a new location. The original dog sculpture was stolen; the long-since decomissioned windmill was transported 3500km to be reassembled at the Museum in Canberra.
Resemblance is a big idea
There are many different ways of thinking about, talking about, and finding or making resemblance:
- relatedness
- affinity
- similitude
- intersections
- facets
- commonality
- conformity.
*Propinquity* is my favourite, though I continually need to look it up to recall that it can mean close in terms of place (proximate), time (synchronous) and spirit (blood, kin).
With young students, a simple, general question might be: What do these two things have in common? You might work with a few familiar objects, and prompt students to think about a range of attributes of each one:
- What form does it take? Think of its shape, colour, size, material.
- Does it have a particular texture? Or smell? Does it make a sound?
- How did it come into being / end up here? (Objects have stories.)
- How was it used and by whom? What other uses might it have?
- What is it called? Consider the name/s by which it is known. (Wordplay is fun :)
A tutorial for teachers
So the tutorial will be a primer for teachers
on priming players
on the idea and practice of resembling.
Then, they should be ready for a Sembl adventure!
In order that teachers are equally well-prepared, the tutorial will also walk you through the process of initiating a game at the Museum, including customising the game for group size, year-level and theme. Some curriculum links will no doubt also help, although in terms of content the learning is wide open.
Please share your response. Do the examples work for you? What other resemblance can you identify between those things?! (If you let me know in the comments, I’ll add them in.)
And: what else do you want or need to know about Sembl?
Dear Cath,
I’m not sure if my comment posted, so I’ll repeat myself. Forgive me.
This is the best “how it goes” description I’ve seen of the game since Charles and I made up a Hipbone game for second-graders (ca 1986).
Now I am working with international students who want to do university study in the US. Is there a “beta” model of Sembl I could play with my “advanced” ESL students in our computer lab? I think there is an enormous potential for language learning here. I wouldn’t want to infringe on anybody’s patent rights or whatevers, but I’d like to get some of my students playing…
What do you think?
Be well,
ken
Hi Cath & Ken:
Here are some further resources:
- the curriculum specific game that Kenny and I devised
- the Cinderella Game, done with a friend of both, also for 2nd graders
- curricula and papers of Eva Bures — see this course outline, this one and this one. And papers on HipBone Games in Higher Education: Supporting Critical and Creative Thinking and “Developing a perspective”, “inter‐connecting”, and “bringing it together”
- papers and blog posts of Nancy McKeand on HipBone fun and learning – see here, here and here.
Also:
- http://www.www.dekita.org/smielt/forum/plenum/social/hello-wayfarer
- http://gwegner.edublogs.org/2007/02/15/the-viral-glass-bead-gameboard/