Games as Models

I just got back from the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) annual conference in Nashville TN.  The NSTA conference is huge and there are many, many good choices of sessions to attend. This is the largest gathering of science teachers in the US, and probably the world, with over 10,000 attendees.  This year I decided to go with a particular objective to focus on since there is no way to glean everything of value at a conference of this size.  I chose some sessions in advance and then left room in my schedule for interesting opportunities.   

Since I’ve been thinking more about the new Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) practice of modeling, I have begun to see models everywhere in my teaching.  As part of my objective, I chose a workshop on using games to teach environmental science. This workshop looked like a good fit with a curricular area I want to emphasize more and I also wanted to explore the connection between games and models.

When I first saw that models and modeling would be part of the NGSS, I was concerned.  How well would this standard apply to the work I was doing with middle school and elementary school students?  Sure, a globe was a model, and so was the anatomical model of a human torso that let students take out and reassemble organs like the heart, lungs, intestines, the stomach, the liver, and so on.  But wasn’t model building in the scientific sense a pretty sophisticated activity?

The section of the NGSS site discussion Modeling as a Science and Engineering Practice explained that: 

Models include diagrams, physical replicas, mathematical representations, analogies, and computer simulations.

Somewhere else I read that someone had included simulation games in the category of models to use in science instruction.  Surely not all games are models, but many simulation games, computerized or not qualify using NGSS criteria, which includes:

·      Physical

·      Conceptual

·      External

·      Analogs

·      Shared

·      Clear

The games we tried out in our workshop were all clearly physical, external, and shared as we used game boards, game pieces, cards, and our own bodies to enact scenarios.  Games like Oh Deer and The Power Plant Game were definitely conceptual and a key part of their value was their abstraction and simplification of a complex underlying system.  These games help us focus on a limited set of essential elements and learn while having fun. 

To the Moon and Back

“First, I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.”

President John F. Kennedy, May 25, 1961, speech to Congress.

As I sat with my students, I thought back to JFK’s historic challenge to the American people issued over fifty years ago.  We were getting ready to undertake a simulated space mission in one of the Challenger Learning Centers at a space and science center near us.  My class listened to the mission briefing about their upcoming trip to Mars, excited and a bit nervous. 

At their age, my classmates and I sat by one of the few television sets in our rural school watching the launch of Alan Shepard’s Mercury flight.  The challenge of putting a person in space was a huge technological effort, requiring advances in science, engineering, and project management, as well as human organization – an ideal STEM task.

Our students were told that they would take turns having a role on a rocket flight to Mars and on the Mar station mission control team.  Both the flight team and mission control were further divided into different teams, such as navigation, life support, communication, life science research, geological research, and medical.  Each team member worked with counterparts on Mars or on the rocket to solve realistic problems such as navigating the craft, repairing rocket life support systems, and determining what foods might be grown on Mars.  To do this, they used both their background knowledge in science and math, as well as some just-in-time learning from digital or print resources needed to complete their mission or to fix a problem.

One of the key takeaways for me was how the space simulation combined multiple levels of teaming, with individuals also making key contributions. Whether they were on the Mars station flight control or the Mars rocket, they needed to cooperate with everyone else in that room to accomplish their goal. They also needed to cooperate with their specialist team. Finally, the whole grade cooperated for the success of the overall mission. This type of simulation feels very much like the work of the future.