Changing a half-baked 3d navigational game

A number of research studies focus on the ways digital games can provide a rich context for students to experiment, explore and engage in meaningful formalism. These researches suggest that games can help students develop valuable skills in the transitional stage between intuitions (informal) and formal mathematics. This can be done either by playing, designing games, or reflecting on game’s rules (Kafai, 1996). In this paper we endeavour to combine these powerful approaches on learning with games, using half-baked games, an idea based on that of halfbaked microworlds (Kynigos, 2001). These are games that incorporate an interesting game idea, but they are incomplete by design. Students while playing the game reflect on rules and change them in order to create a new game of their own choice. Thus they engage both in the process of instrumentation while using the game and in the process of instrumentalisation while changing the game resulting in a variety of artefacts (Guin and Trouche, 1999). In present research study we used a half-baked game built on the Cruislet environment, a 3d digital medium that incorporates both GIS and Logo programming. It is designed for mathematically driven navigations in virtual 3d geographical spaces and thereby enables the user to explore navigation in 3d geographical space, spatial visualization and mathematical concepts embedded in a realistic context. Navigation with Cruislet is feasible by defining objects’ (airplanes) displacements, either by using an iconic interface or using Logo. The Logo editor provides opportunities to run and edit programs and thus create multiple behaviours of objects, or game rules. In this small scale research, two 17 year old students worked collaboratively and engaged in processes of playing the game, reflecting on its rules, de-coding the rule and intervening into the Logo code in order to change the game and create something of their own choice. Findings indicate that the half-baked game and the representations embedded in the Cruislet environment provided a meaningful context in which students engage in processes of mathematisation of geographical space.