Learning while playing

Community-designed educational games teach math, climate change and more.

School children in Santa Ana, California, playing Fraction Ball. Photo by Andres Bustamante.

I’m not sure how it happened, but recently I wrote not one but TWO articles about using games as a communication or teaching tool. 

• In BOLD blog you can read about a project in Santa Ana, California, where education researchers worked with local families to develop games and activities that would introduce casual learning experiences for children. (One of the games pictured above)

• For Hakai I wrote about a custom-designed board game that helped a Maori community decide how best to protect their meeting place against climate change-induced floods.

What was striking to me when reporting these pieces was that both (very different) games were designed together with the people that would eventually be playing the games. They’re great example of building creative connections between researchers and communities. For more about games and learning, read this review by Rebecca Bayeck.

Interesting Links

• Natalie Wolchover won a Pullitzer this week for this Quanta article about the James Webb Space Telescope. 

• Lithuanian artists expose the flaws of today’s society and complicated scientific ideas in thought-provoking illustrations. By Eglė Krištopaitytė on Bored Panda.

• You hear the musical saw. These mathematicians heard geometry. By Nicholas Bakalar in the New York Times.

• African Space Art Project – A world first for African art and space science. By Mustapha Iderawumi on Space in Africa

• Carlo Rovelli on How Literary Greats Find Inspiration in Scientific Rationality. On Lithub   

Support Mixture

If you enjoy Mixture and want to support the freelance science writer who produces it, you can buy me a coffee or simply tell your friends about this newsletter. It also helps me if you check out The Sample or Refind, who will show you cool newsletters and in turn show other people my newsletter.