Schools Portfolio

Playing the Game

Rules of the Game

The interaction was established in the following structure:

The Puppet Master managing the platform and allow to appear appropriate files with the piece of the story. The Control Basis needs to listening the story part and to send the information (hint ) to the outdoor team to put them in the right direction to find needed task. The outdoor team following the hint is finding the task and preparing appropriate answers in the digital format. After that they contact the Control Basis and reporting about the progress. The created files are uploaded to the platform. The Puppet Masters make comments and evaluation of the work done and making decision about game progress.

The interaction tools were mobile phones, audio and video files, communication with the Museum and Information centre staff, internet, web game platform.

We use competition aspect in the game and teams tried to finish the entire tasks as fast as possible.

Playing the Game

The game players were divided into two groups witch where competed between each other. There were two groups of children and we named them Team A and Team B (according they classes letters).

The game started the day before the interactive activates. Students were introduced about the strange box received to the school. They went to find out the box content and found a strange bottle with the message – website address and access codes. Children went to the computer lab and opened the website where they appeared into game level 1. They found a pre-scenario file with the audio file telling the story introduction.

After the story introduction there were teachers and children discussions. It was created teams and each children got a role – to be a reporter (and use mobile phone for communication with the Control Basis via sms and platform’s chat), video recorder, audio recorder, photo recorder and GPS navigator. Each team consisted from 5 students and 2 tutors.

Puppet Master	The Puppet Master’s role was taken by the teachers. The Puppet Masters were controlled one team: they were followed the game progress and uploaded the appropriate files (see table in part 5) to develop the game; they communicated with Control Basis via platform chat to define if the tasks were implemented and reported in proper way; they were evaluating the uploaded material and were sending comments to Control Basis via chat; they were managing the completing the game levels; they communicated with the tutors during the game via mobile phones.
Control Base	The Control Basis role was allocated to the children. 2 students per team were left in the school and communicated with they team outside. The Control Base was responsible to mange those actions: to communicate with the outdoor team via sms, platform chat and to send comprehensive information; to follow the game progress in the game platform; to implement tasks allocated for Control Basis and to fulfill necessary game’s story parts; to upload needed documents to the game platform to communicate with the Puppet Master via platform chat and to report game progress of the team.
Players	The players were 5 children per team groups with divided responsibilities. Each of them knew that they are responsible for particular activity (photo taking, video, audio recording, GPS navigation). At the same time they needed to play as a team. The main of the players were: to follow the game and to fulfill the tasks to develop the story; to use all equipment to navigate in the location and to create necessary records; to communicate with the Control Basis via sms and platform chat; to upload the files to the game platform; to collect the material and to edit afterwards.
Game tutors	There were 2 teachers per team who went out together with the students. They were observing the teams and: placed the tasks in the appropriate time; made the hints if the students came to the misunderstanding and missed the way; communicated with the Puppet Masters and to check the game progress.