Abstract
In this chapter, I turn my attention to 13- and 14-year-olds learning chemistry as part of their general science education in formal curriculum. The study of chemistry is necessarily located within the broader context of science education carried out in schools. As indicated in Sect. 2.1, available educational games for chemistry tend to be designed as games-to-teach students about chemistry content rather than games-to-learn chemistry.
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- 1.
As a multiplayer game, it would have been possible to adopt a division-of-labor strategy, with the result that not all students need engage with doing chemistry experiments in the virtual laboratory.
- 2.
Of course, in an absolute sense, game systems are always only models of the world. The issue here concerns the degree of fidelity to the “real” world.
- 3.
There is also an eight-level variant of the game in which two of the original levels were each subdivided into two parts because it was found, in practice, that these two original levels required more classroom time to complete than was typically available.
- 4.
Note that, given the level of abstraction employed in designing the game, we do not deal with specific types of acid, for example, sulfuric acid or hydrochloric acid. Hence, coding the color of acid blue should be taken in the spirit of the fictiveness of game play rather than literally. What is important to note, however, is how the clearness of the blue color is intended to signify that the acid is pure.
- 5.
While we, as designers, think of the substance as iron filings, in practice, any substance with like properties is also acceptable as a speculative substance that students may suggest.
- 6.
In the context of how local students speak and what they mean, it should be clarified that the student was referring to obtaining a non-preferred chemical reaction when he used the phrase “the reaction is wrong,” and to remembering the non-preferred reaction as the preferred one when he used the phrase “remember the reaction wrongly.”
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Chee, Y.S. (2016). Legends of Alkhimia: Engaging in Scientific Inquiry by Being a Chemist. In: Games-To-Teach or Games-To-Learn. Gaming Media and Social Effects. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-518-1_5
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