The late computer scientist and education visionary Randy Pauch said “[t]he best way to teach somebody something is to have them think they’re learning something else” (2007). Daniel Roy of Education Arcade at MIT gave us the same message in the early days of the TVC project. His research and experience suggests that drilling and practicing games do not attract students. Roy also suggested that we examine the idea of developing story or adventure games (2008).

A subgroup of the TVC project team decided, in consultation with Rev. Fuachie, that a prudent starting point for content development for rural Ghana that would follow Roy's advice would be to adapt traditional Ghanaian games and stories to the platform. The hypothesis is that familiarity with these games and stories would provide a bridge into the technological environment of the TVC. The TVC could then be used to implement variations on existing Ghanaian board games and stories to incorporate additional concepts. The natural starting points here were the board game Owari and the collection of Ananzi stories.


Owari
Owari is in the class of Mancala games that are played in various cultures around the world. Owari fits some of the criteria we established for educational content for the TVC. It requires counting and encourages the development of critical thinking in forming game playing strategies. Owari is often played 1 on 1, but can be played as 2 on 2 or 3 on 3, therefore encouraging collaboration among team members. We envision the development of variations of Owari that are highly engaging and encourage the development of other skills.

The game board consists of cups or indentations in a board (or sometimes the ground) that represent “houses.” Each player or side has six houses. Two addition cups are used to hold stones that are captured from one's opponent. Each house is given four stones initially. The typical rules of play in Ghana are then as follows (cf. http://members.aol.com/sstev74322/owari11.htm ):

1 Players alternate in picking up the all of the beads from one house on their side of the board and of their choosing.
2 The player who has the turn must “sow” one bead in each of the houses that follow in an anti-clockwise direction around the board the house from which they picked up the stones. The player then examines the house into which they deposited their last stone.
3 Depending on the number of stones now in this house, there are different courses of action:
3.1 If the last house into which a stone was deposited does not have 2 or 3 stones, no action is taken and the other player has a turn.
3.2 If the last house belongs to the opponent and the number of beads is 2 or 3, the player collects all of those beads.
3.3 If a player collects beads, then they look at the next to last house to see if it satisfies the same criteria as 3.2. If it does, then the player collects those stones as well.
3.4 If the player has 11 or more beads – enough to wrap around the board – the player skips the house from which they picked up the stones while sowing stones.
4 When a player has no more beads, the game is over. The player without beads is the loser.

We developed storyboards for Owari as part of a standard game design process. These are shown in Figures 10 through 17 below. These shown not only how the game is played, but one possible variation which can engage the players with simple arithmetic expressions showing the results of a move.


















Anansi the Spider
The Anansi the Spider is the character within the most well-known collection of stories in Ghana. The Anansi stories are well-known in many other parts of Africa and the world (cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anansi ). Anansi is a trickster. The stories are traditionally told within family settings, such as those described in our market analysis for Ghana. Beside entertainment, they are meant to teach children moral lessons. The advantage of using the Anansi stories as the basis for computer-aided learning is that they are well-known in Ghana and could, thus, provide a cultural bridge to the TVC. There are also many stories in the collection, thus, raising the possibility of a series of related story games.

One well-known example of these stories is Anansi and the Baboon. One rendering is given as follows:

Ananzi and the Baboon
ANANZI and Baboon were disputing one day which was fatter. Ananzi said he was sure he was fat, but Baboon declared he was fatter. Then Ananzi proposed that they should prove it. So they made a fire, and agreed that they should hang up before it, and see which would drop the most fat.

Then Baboon hung up Ananzi first, but no fat dropped.

Then Ananzi hung up Baboon, and very soon the fat began to drop, which smelled so good that Ananzi cut a slice out of Baboon, and said;

“Oh! Brother Baboon, you’re fat for certain!”

But Baboon didn’t speak.

So Ananzi said:

“Well, speak or not speak, I’ll eat you every bit to-day.” — which he really did.

But when he had eaten up all of Baboon, the bits joined themselves together in his stomach, and began to pull him about so much that he had no rest, and was obliged to go to the doctor.

The doctor told him not to eat anything for some days; then he was to get a ripe banana and hold it to his mouth; when the Baboon, who would be hungry, smelled the banana, he would be sure to run up to eat it, and so he would run out of his mouth.

So Ananzi starved himself, and got the banana, and did as the doctor told him; but when he put the banana to his mouth, he was so hungry he couldn’t help eating it. So he didn’t get rid of the Baboon, which went on pulling him about till he was obliged to go back to the doctor, who told him he would soon cure him. He took a banana and held it to Ananzi’s mouth; and very soon the Baboon jumped up to catch it, and ran out of his mouth; and Ananzi was very glad to get rid of him. And Baboons to this very day like bananas.


— Recorded by Sir George Dasent.
(Source: http://www.elfinspell.com/WitandHumor/14Ananzi.html . From “West Indian Negro Wit and Humor” IN The World’s Wit and Humor, Vol. XIV, Russian, Scandinavian, and Miscellaneous Wit and Humor; The Review of Reviews Company; New York; 1906; pp. 284-290. )

We explored ways in which Anansi stories might be adapted to a computer-based setting. We designed a first version of a game based on Anansi and Baboon using collaborative design techniques. Our research indicates that there are a number of general models for designing such games. We will explore these indepth in the future. The method we developed was to decompose the narrative to give the player decision points related to the character dialogue. One flow would render the original plot of the story. Other paths would yield alternate lessons. We also found in this particular story that the orders from the doctor to Anansi to fast for three days opened the possibility for iteration with critical judgment points at each stage. In this case, the player can be given the choice to fast for another day or to eat. The player must face certain consequences for deciding to eat early. A state diagram for a first version of our game is given in Figure x.