Commandos is a real-time point and click strategy game, drawing on historical
events/missions from the Second World War.
Missions involve one or more soldier avatar each of which carries certain physical/
other characteristics and a player(s) use their combined efforts in order to solve
stealth-oriented missions.
Donald Norman's ideas - which draw on Brenda Laurel's ideas of immersion and first-person
engagement with a task - could support the use of this game with an all-boys S3 class. I envisage:
- engagement in critical thinking and reflection tasks before the beginning/at the end of a lesson
- intra-/inter-group engagement
- first-person involvement
- cross-curricular learning (History, e.g.)
- the provision of 'rich tasks', whereby pupils can produce non-fiction investigations, engage with World War poetry
- group collaboration and competition (Whitton)
- used a source for personal journal writing
This would ultimately appeal to boys (note: I wonder how girls would react and perform !?) and I would allow for 5 minutes of game engagement followed by 5 minutes of reflection/journalling, both of which could draw on a specific writing task for that period. This type of engagement and critical thinking could 'warm the muscle' required for the remainder of the period...
Keywords: IDGBL10