Collaborative Board Game to Confront Shaming and Lack of Social Skills
INDUSTRY: Education
SKILLS: Learning Experiences Design, Educational Game Design
AWARDS: Sponsored by Minister of Education Israel. Awarded for Educational Innovation in 2018
PRESS: TV Interview
BUSINESS:
Extensive usage of smartphones cause students to be less caring of each other and less social. Doron Weinberger, school manager in Haifa Israel, approached us to help solving that issue. His initiative is sponsored by the Ministry of Education, and planned to become a 5 year program in other schools around Israel.
The goal was creating an engaging game component that would emphasis the face to face communication model and interpersonal problem solving skills we want each child to have.
We were asked to create the game (full production), design the activity around it, and make sure it matches the social skills of the educational program.
process of the gameplay unfolds in the game board. beginning with no map cards, and reaching the castle at the top
Engage in Collaborative Play Against a Common Monster - Always Unites the Group
DESIGN:
BotShi Island is a board game features collaborative group play. The players form a team and play against the board. They are required to save the island villages from the evil sorcerer who took their happiness and unique skills and hobbies. The participants need to use map cards to carve the road to the castle, fight the sorcerer and remove the spell. On their path, they will walk through villages, where they face group tasks. Succeeding these tasks will ease the end battle. The tasks force collaborative play, getting to know one another, and they enhance skills and hobbies that are otherwise numb (cooking, music, dance, drama, mime, puzzle solving and more).
Eventually they discover that BotShi is actually a good wizard, who was forced to lay the spells since the villagers were mean to one another (in Hebrew if you read BotShi backwards you get "Good Man". Similarly- NamDoog).
Doron Weinberger and one of his students are interviewed about the program and the game in the local news channel
Board-game as an Educational Platform for Teachers
DESIGN:
The game is designed to be played in under 30 minutes. In the rest of the time, the teacher can talk with the participants about their experience, and use the winning strategies as a lever to communicate a specific social skill.
Teachers are able to select group tasks from a wide range of options, as well as add new ones according to the model we provided them with.
Update (November 2018): Minister of Education awards the game and the entire program for educational innovation.
Update (December 2018): All Elementary school teachers are playing with the game in their classes.
Liron explains about the course of the game and how to use it to teach to the whole crew of teachers in the School in Haifa, Israel
Players build the trail to reach the castle. Every time they get to a village, they have to do a group task.
the cubes of feelings. come up with a real sentence according the words shown on the wooden cubes
Talent cards. To win this group challenge, players must know the talents of all other participants.
TEAM:
Liron Levi-Oz: Game Design, Producer
Shachar Oz: Game Design
Doron Weinberg: School Director
Neta Ecker: School Teacher, Program Leader
Magali Volman: Graphic Design
Play testing kit
