Almirante: Evaluating the board game: Board game, startup, discounted cash flow, venture capital method, real options

This thesis evaluates a start-up company (Jogos Almirante Lda) whose single asset is a board game named Almirante. It aims to conclude whether it makes sense to create a company or just earn copyrights. The thesis analyzes the board game’s market, as part of the general toy’s market, from which some data exists: European countries as well as the USA. In this work it is analyzed the several ways to finance a start-up company and then present an overview of the valuation of the Jogos Almirante based on three different methods: Discounted Cash Flow, Venture Capital Method and Real Options.

Teaching sexual abuse prevention skills to two children with intellectual disabilities through game play

The current study examined the effectiveness of a sexual abuse prevention program developed locally for children with intellectual disabilities. The program package included a board game with informational storybooks that were designed to be used in a family setting. Additionally, this research sought to determine if parents could be effective at presenting the sexual abuse pr~vention materials to their children. A multiple baseline across behaviours design was used with two participants with a diagnosis of autism. Through role play scenarios as well as verbal knowledge tests, it was determined that the program was effective at teaching the participants the skills presented for self protection. It was also determined that the skills learned were generalized to scenarios that were untrained during the game play. Finally, with additional supports, it was determined that parents were able to effectively teach their children the required skills.

Noughts and crosses on a draughts board

Some of the various mathematical ways in which the popular board game noughts and crosses can be played are discussed. Details of different types of variants of noughts and crosses along with instructions on the same are highlighted.

Education for Energy Efficiency through an Educational Game

This paper presents an assessment of an educational game for teaching the efficient use of electricity. Developed with Adobe Flash (R), it is a virtual board game where participants choose a car that starts the path and reaches the same final goal, going through a number of track steps defined in terms of a dice that each player rolls in turn. The car moves if the participant is able to correctly answer a question that is randomly generated by the software. The objective of the game is to answer questions related to energy efficiency promoting a healthy and attractive learning process for participants on concepts related to energy efficiency such as: the rational use of energy, the basic concepts of forms of energy generation, among others. The main objective of this paper is to assess the impact of the application of this virtual game in the teaching and learning process of high school students. Therefore, the game was applied in the discipline of physics in a class of junior high public school in the state of Sao Paulo. Initially, the class that had 43 students was divided into 10 groups of 4 students, and 1 group of 3 students. Each student group competed with one another. The idea was that each of them should indicate a student who was the representative of this group until only 4 group leaders were selected for the finals. At this stage, each student could interact with a group of up to ten students that acted as advisers. The adopted assessment process is based on the model proposed by Savi [7]. Then, at the end of the game, the students answered a prepared questionnaire based on the model proposed by Savi. According to Savi, although there are significant studies that show the importance of educational games for the process of cognitive development and learning concepts of students, there are few papers that present forms of assessing the potential of these resources. Thus, the assessment criteria proposed by Savi are based on the model of training evaluation by Kirkpatrick [3], taken as a reference to measure the efficiency of processes of continuing education courses for professionals. The authors assert that the metric of the evaluation proposed to assess the game is based on the first level of the model proposed by Kirkpatrick.

A Software Platform for Educational Board Games

Educational games such as quizzes, quests, puzzles, mazes and logical problems may be modeled as multimedia board games. In the scope of the ADOPTA project1 being under development at the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics at Sofia University, a formal model for presentation of such educational board games was invented and elaborated. Educational games can be modeled as special board mini-games, with a board of any form and any types of positions. Over defined positions, figures (objects) with certain properties are placed and, next, there are to be defined formal rules for manipulation of these figures and resulted effects. The model has been found to be general enough in order to allow description and execution control of more complex logical problems to be solved by several actions delivered to/by the player according some formal rules and context conditions and, in general, of any learning activities and their workflow. It is used as a base for creation of a software platform providing facilities for easy construction of multimedia board games and their execution. The platform consists of game designer (i.e., a game authoring tool) and game run-time controller communicating each other through game repository. There are created and modeled many examples of educational board games appropriate for didactic purposes, self evaluations, etc., which are supposed to be designed easily by authors with no IT skills and experience. By means of game metadata descriptions, these games are going be included into narrative storyboards and, next, delivered to learners with appropriate profile according their learning style, preferences, etc. Moreover, usage of artificial intelligence agents is planned as well – once as playing virtual opponents of the player or, otherwise, being virtual advisers of the gamer helping him/her in finding the right problem solution within given domain such as discovering a treasure using a location map, finding best tour in a virtual museum, guessing an unknown word in a hangman game, and many others.

Can playing Monopoly™ enhance learning for property students

This paper outlines the initial results from a pilot study into the educational use of the board game Monopoly City™ in a first year property economics unit. This game play was introduced as a fun and interactive way of achieving a number of desired outcomes including: enhanced engagement of first year students; introduction of foundational threshold concepts in property education; introduction of problem solving and critical analysis skills; early acculturation of property students to enhance student retention; and early team building within the Property Economics cohort, all in an engaging and entertaining way. Preliminary results in this research project are encouraging. The students participating in this initial cycle have demonstrated explicit linkages between their Monopoly City™ experiences and foundation urban economic and valuation theories. Students are also recognising the role strategy and chance play in the property sector. However, linking Monopoly City™ activities to assessment has proved important in student attendance and hence engagement.

Playing Monopoly(TM) with 1st year property economics students

Game playing contributes to the acquisition of required skills and competencies whilst supporting collaboration, communication and problem solving. This project introduced the board game Monopoly CityTM to tie theoretical class room learning with collaborative, play based problem solving.

Playing Monopoly™ with real estate students

This paper outlines the results from a study into the educational use of the board game Monopoly City™ in a first year real estate unit. This game play was introduced as a fun and interactive way of achieving a number of desired outcomes including: introduction of foundational threshold concepts in real estate education; introduction of problem solving and critical analysis skills; early acculturation of real estate students to enhance student retention; early team building within the student cohort; and enhanced engagement of first year students and, all in an engaging and entertaining way. Results from this two-stage research project are encouraging. The students participating in this project have demonstrated explicit linkages between their Monopoly City™ experiences and foundation urban economic and valuation theories. Students are also recognising the role strategy and chance play in the real estate sector. Findings from this project and key success factors are presented.

Tantas histórias, tantas lembranças: o cotidiano dos idosos da Candelária, Morro da Mangueira

Tantas histórias, tantas lembranças analisa a relação entre os moradores mais antigos e a comunidade da Candelária, uma das localidades do Morro da Mangueira, no Rio de Janeiro. Além disso, busca resgatar lembranças, saber da história da região com base em relatos orais dos idosos, rememorar causos famosos e pitorescos, descobrir lugares de memória e acompanhar um pouco do dia a dia dos mais velhos, principalmente daqueles que participam do jogo de dominó. A presença da mulher é muito marcante dentro da comunidade, sendo, muitas vezes, a responsável pelo sustento da casa e pela educação dos filhos. Utiliza-se como suporte teórico autores como Peter Burke (2005), Néstor Garcia Canclini (2006) e Roger Chartier (2002), para tratar de algumas noções de culturas; Beatriz Sarlo (2007), Jacques Le Goff (2003), Maurice Halbwachs (1968) e Michael Pollak (1992), para falar sobre memória. Para a contextualização dos lugares, baseia-se na geografia humanista com Yi Fu Tuan (1983) e o arcabouço teórico de Milton Santos (2008). As narrativas analisadas neste trabalho foram coletadas durante seis meses de investigação por meio de uma pesquisa participante que envolveu filmagens para um documentário, bem como utilização de entrevistas em profundidade e a elaboração de diários de campo. Nesses relatos, percebe-se que, na favela, o tempo das relações é diferente, mais lento, sendo mais saboreado por seus habitantes. Tempo que se mescla com as tecnologias da comunicação levadas pelas novas gerações não assimiladas pela maioria dos mais velhos , as quais não ofuscam as relações afetuosas, que, como bem diz Milton Santos, transformam um espaço de convivência em um lugar. A origem de Minas Gerais permanece cristalizada, presente, viva em todos os momentos, sejam em festas comunitárias, nas comidas, na Folia de Reis. Tradições tentam ser preservadas pelos atores sociais, mas percebe-se que ocorreram algumas adaptações ao longo do tempo. Os idosos representam influências na cultura cotidiana, não como protagonistas, mas como referências cujas opiniões são consultadas e ouvidas por boa parte dessa comunidade tão peculiar chamada Candelária.

CTRL-S The Planet - the Green IT Boardgame

INFO2009 learning resource coursework. This is a board game that allows you to have fun learning about the facts of Green IT

INFO2009 2012-13 Resource Group 11 CTRL-S The Planet - the Green IT Boardgame

INFO2009 learning resource coursework. This is a board game that allows you to have fun learning about the facts of Green IT

Diversions with John Gough : Blokus in space

The article evaluates the board game Blokus from Sekkoïa.

Quantifying epistemic actions in human-computer interaction

As digital systems move away from traditional desktop setups, new interaction paradigms are emerging that better integrate with users’ realworld surroundings, and better support users’ individual needs. While promising, these modern interaction paradigms also present new challenges, such as a lack of paradigm-specific tools to systematically evaluate and fully understand their use. This dissertation tackles this issue by framing empirical studies of three novel digital systems in embodied cognition – an exciting new perspective in cognitive science where the body and its interactions with the physical world take a central role in human cognition. This is achieved by first, focusing the design of all these systems on a contemporary interaction paradigm that emphasizes physical interaction on tangible interaction, a contemporary interaction paradigm; and second, by comprehensively studying user performance in these systems through a set of novel performance metrics grounded on epistemic actions, a relatively well established and studied construct in the literature on embodied cognition. The first system presented in this dissertation is an augmented Four-in-a-row board game. Three different versions of the game were developed, based on three different interaction paradigms (tangible, touch and mouse), and a repeated measures study involving 36 participants measured the occurrence of three simple epistemic actions across these three interfaces. The results highlight the relevance of epistemic actions in such a task and suggest that the different interaction paradigms afford instantiation of these actions in different ways. Additionally, the tangible version of the system supports the most rapid execution of these actions, providing novel quantitative insights into the real benefits of tangible systems. The second system presented in this dissertation is a tangible tabletop scheduling application. Two studies with single and paired users provide several insights into the impact of epistemic actions on the user experience when these are performed outside of a system’s sensing boundaries. These insights are clustered by the form, size and location of ideal interface areas for such offline epistemic actions to occur, as well as how can physical tokens be designed to better support them. Finally, and based on the results obtained to this point, the last study presented in this dissertation directly addresses the lack of empirical tools to formally evaluate tangible interaction. It presents a video-coding framework grounded on a systematic literature review of 78 papers, and evaluates its value as metric through a 60 participant study performed across three different research laboratories. The results highlight the usefulness and power of epistemic actions as a performance metric for tangible systems. In sum, through the use of such novel metrics in each of the three studies presented, this dissertation provides a better understanding of the real impact and benefits of designing and developing systems that feature tangible interaction.

Criar o próprio jogo didático ou apenas jogar? Efeitos de diferentes estratégias de ensino na motivação e aprendizado de ciências

The use of games as educational tools is common, however the effectiveness of games with educational purposes is still poorly known. In this study we evaluated three different low-cost teaching strategies make and play your own board game, just play an educational science game and make a poster to be exposed in the school regarding: (1) science learning; (2) use of deep learning strategies (DLS); and (3) intrinsic motivation. We tested the hypothesis that, in these three parameters evaluated, scores would be higher in the group that made and play their own game, followed respectively by the group that just played a game and the group that made a poster. The research involved 214 fifth-grade students from six elementary schools in Natal/RN. A group of students made and played their own science board game (N = 68), a second group played a science game (N = 75), and a third group made a poster to be exposed at school (N = 71). Our hypothesis was partly empirically supported, since there was no significant difference in science learning and in the use of DLS between the group that made their own game and the group that just played the game; however, both groups had significantly higher scores in science learning and in use of DLS than the group that made the poster. There was no significant difference in the scores of intrinsic motivation among the three experimental groups. Our results indicate that activities related to non-digital games can provide a favorable context for learning in the school environment. We conclude that the use of games for educational purposes (both making a game and just playing a game) is an efficient and viable alternative to teach science in Brazilian public school