This heartfelt, gorgeously animated adventure is a short and sweet reminder of sun-filled summer days with new friends. Luca's themes are reminiscent of those in Finding Nemo, The Little Mermaid, and even Onward. The boys turn into friends who are more like brothers, discovering both the joys and the dangers of the human world, and their adventure is filled with memorable views under the sea. This isn't a tearjerker – not every Pixar film needs to be an emotional affair. Luca is tender, sweet, and also funny with silly physical comedy. Luca's message is about family and friendship. Which characters do you consider role models? How do their actions demonstrate curiosity, teamwork, and perseverance? Why are those important character strengths? The movie also portrays a father's disability. How does it impact him? Is it important to see people with disabilities represented in popular culture?
Learning from “Raya and the Last Dragon” 2021 movie
I was excited to hear that Disney was going to make a movie based on Southeast Asian cultures and themes. As I am Singaporean, I was hoping it would be good. After watching Raya, it did not disappoint with an entertaining and thought-provoking story. There was a blend of all the different cultures and races of Southeast Asia - the movie did not showcase any specific country in the design or various tribes in the show. Although I wished the use of other animals or symbols of “Asianess” instead of a dragon, it was done respectfully but I preferred the dragon representation in Shang Chi best. The key theme in this movie is about unity – a theme that is very current today. How do we find common ground after all the diversity and even betrayal in a social-economic complex world? A more complex story compared to other Disney fares but a good one and will probably work better after several viewings to see all the different elements of the story and Asian representation. What are your thoughts of the movie?
Learning from “The Mitchells vs. The Machines” 2021 movie
Although this movie didn’t win the Oscars, it did win the hearts of my kids. Of all the movies nominated this year, this was the only one my kids wanted to watch over and over again, laughing hysterically every single time. It shouldn’t be surprising seeing this movie was masterfully produced by Phil Lord and Chris Miller the duo behind The Lego Movie and Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse.
At it’s heart, it’s a story about imperfection – whether it refers to your family (like the constantly bickering Mitchells vs their always Instagram-ready neighbors), your chosen school subject (studying film vs anything else with a more stable income) and our over-reliance on technology that affects our social relationships. As a father, I can really relate to the father-daughter dynamic of wanting to protect vs letting your child go. I’m glad that the movie ends with the family connecting better (but not a perfect ending) and saving humanity from an evil AI. So what are your thoughts on this movie?
Learning from Oscar 2022 Animated Feature Films
Yes, Encanto won this year but this was a great selection with a very diverse group of stories from the Southeast Asian themed Raya and the Last Dragon, 1950s Italian Luca, Danish Flee with LGBT themes and the multigenerational Colombian family Encanto. It’s makes the typical white family trying to save the world The Mitchells vs. the Machines sound almost bland! We will be sharing what we learnt from some of these movies and how they can add some colour into your learning toolkit. So which movie was your favourite?
Learning from Don’t Look Up 2021 movie
I was quite skeptical when this movie was nominated for the Oscars. A satire with comedy? But with such an illustrious cast of stars, may be that was the ticket to success at the academy awards? It draws so many parallels with our current situation like the asteroid coming to destroy the earth akin to climate change though I would consider that it’s also similar to covid as a non-visible killer (at least you can’t see the asteroid yet). We have the amazing Meryl Streep who’s portraying a self-centred American president with large golden hair proclaiming “Don’t look up!” just like Trump during his MAGA campaign. Similarly, celebrity worship and social media popularity is so unapologetically brash in the movie that nobody takes the impending doom seriously – sometimes portraying issues with our media a bit close to heart. The eccentric tech billionaire played by Mark Rylance is part Tim Cook, part Mark Zuckerberg (with god-like algorithms to know exactly how you die) has the heart of a spreadsheet and the mind of a spiritual guru is quite hilarious if not for the likelihood the movie made his character an actual encapsulation of big CEOs today. What are your thoughts on the movie?
Learning from Dune 2021 movie
I must confess I did enjoy David Lynch’s Dune, because it was about Dune! A book that I enjoyed as a teenager in the 80s. To be able to see the stories as written by Frank Herbert was just icing on the cake. Yes, there are certain particularities in that movie and even some darkness from the evil Harkonnens but I think it’s par for the course as per the book. When Denis Villeneuve was mentioned to direct a new version, I was naturally excited as he has a ability to make a visual spectacle. It was the first movie I went back to watch in the theatres during covid and was I glad I did – the visuals promised didn’t disappoint. What I found lacking was the pace of the movie and the almost exact story structure of Lynch’s movie which made the watch almost samey but much grander with fantastic effects (it’s almost 40 years from Lynch’s movie – so it had better be!)
So the learning from the movie or the book is how humanity is constantly being held hostage by a critical resource – the spice melange (crude oil) and how outsiders (geo-political allegorists) are constantly looking to exploit and hunt for it. Political backstabbing and betrayal (topics we don’t teach enough on) follows naturally when the hero’s family (house Atreides) was destroyed by the Harkonnens and the Galactic King. There’s also a religious undertone for this sci-fi story where the ideas of fate and destiny play a part by the Bene Gesserit who are trying to create a messiah. Very forward thinking for a book written in the 60s. For those in the know, George Lucas has mentioned many times that Star Wars was heavy influenced by Dune. What are your thoughts on the movie?
Learning from King Richard 2021 movie
Initially thinking it was about Richard III but turns out a more modern Richard, Richard Williams, who is the father of Venus and Serena the two tennis greats. The themes I felt from his story, how he managed to coach and bring up two top sports personalities (in the movie he claims to have two Michael Jordans) are through determination and clear ambition, sometimes sheltering the kids from tough external prejudices like racism at country clubs and elite academies. He also tried to protect his girls physically from neighborhood gangs in Compton, an impoverished city in Los Angeles. In a way, he had to develop himself, moving away from his own tough childhood shaped by poverty, violence and discrimination growing up a black man in Louisiana. Richard embodies a tireless commitment and somewhat confrontational style to secure a better future for his daughters and the family. The movie provided a wholesome and nice message about hope and “following the plan” with the charismatic Will Smith as Richard who is also nominated as Best Actor.
Learning from the Oscars 2022
The Oscars are only a week away! Which movie do you think will win Best Picture this year? And importantly what can we learn from these movies? We'll do a deeper dive into some of these movies to see what ideas and skills from the movies can be transferred into our learning processes. Here are some of our favourite movies in no particular order:
King Richard: A look at how tennis superstars Venus and Serena Williams became who they are after the coaching from their father Richard Williams.
Dune: Feature adaptation of Frank Herbert's science fiction novel about the son of a noble family entrusted with the protection of the most valuable asset and most vital element in the galaxy.
Don't Look Up: Two low-level astronomers must go on a giant media tour to warn mankind of an approaching comet that will destroy planet Earth.
The Power of the Dog: Charismatic rancher Phil Burbank inspires fear and awe in those around him. When his brother brings home a new wife and her son, Phil torments them until he finds himself exposed to the possibility of love.
#oscars2022 #learning #moviestowatch JJFS ThinkLab
Games that make you smarter and more creative
Good article here about how games can improve cognitive ability and creativity, although I would suggest some are not so effective although popular (e.g. Clue, Chutes and Ladders, Pay Day, Scrabble) while some are relatively challenging unless you are a serious gamer (e.g. Le Havre, Diplomacy, Twilight Imperium, Trajan).
PC games of the 1990s – Romance of the Three Kingdoms II
Romance of the Three Kingdoms II is a turn-based strategy games produced by Koei and based on the historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Players choose from one of six scenarios that determine the initial layout of power in ancient China. The scenarios loosely depict allegiances and territories controlled by the warlords as according to the novel, although gameplay does not follow events in the novel after the game begins. After choosing the scenario, players determine which warlord(s) they will control. Custom characters may be inserted into territories unoccupied by other forces, as well. A total of 41 different provinces exist, as well as over 200 unique characters. Each character has many statistics, which range from 10 to 100 (the higher the better). A warlord's Intelligence, War Ability and Charm influence how successful he or she will be when performing certain tasks, such as dueling or increasing land value in a province. The player wins the game by conquering all territories in China. This is accomplished by being in control of every province on the map. The game includes a reputation system that affects the rate of officers' loyalties towards their lords, added treasures and special items that can increase an officer's stats and advisers can help their lords predict the chances of success in executing a plan. The game includes statistics galore for those who not only enjoys playing at the micro-level of managing all the individual characters and maximizing their abilities to do actions e.g. recruit other characters or going to war, but also a bigger picture when going to battle with other territories to be the ruler of China.
This is one of my all-time favorite games as it gives me the opportunity to think and plan at both the macro and micro level. It was played during a time when I had a lot of time to experiment and play computer games so I went quite deep into it, even creating spreadsheets to plan different scenarios and to help decide on utilizing which character out of hundreds to choose from. The game does take quite a while with 41 territories to conquer but the process to winning was simply an engaging process of numbers and planning!
You like numbers in a game … we’ve got numbers!
PC games of the 1990s – Perfect General II
Perfect General II, originally released in 1994, featured air power, tank encounters, infantry battles, in-depth planning requirements, and multiple victory conditions spread across world combat zones in both historical and "what if" battles to offer players a global battlefield for waging world war. Major campaigns and 20 scenarios feature the Battle of the Bulge, Desert Fox, Tobruk, Eclipse of the Rising Sun, and The Kursk Campaign. Each scenario offers an assortment of game options for customization of the turn-based action. Three types of basic games (balanced, attacker, or defender), varied lengths, full or partial kill requirements, sighting style, random hits, visible or hidden mines, environmental effects (variable or pre-set) and friendly city unit repairs are just some of the adjustable parameters. Victory conditions vary, running the gamut from point acquisition to defensive holding actions. Twenty-one types of terrain, varied weather conditions, and multiple units expand the level of detail. When you start the scenario, you have to already plan how to spend your resources wisely, how to equip for the battle ahead, how often do you get reinforcements and where do your enemy place their reinforcements are all questions you have to strategize for.
This was an amazing war game for me – moving from playing Risk to Axis & Allies (a much more realistic and sophisticated board game) to this! Being turn-based also gave the arm-chair general in me plenty of time to plan my moves and think strategically. Remembering that it’s not about what has happened before but rather anticipate and make your own strategic and tactical moves to defeat the AI. Some of the real-world scenarios were very difficult to win, which gave me strong appreciation to the challenges a real world general have to face. An evergreen classic!
It’s not a war game unless it has hexes!
PC games of the 1990s - the golden age
1990s was truly a wonderful time to play computer games as a kid. The games were simple yet engaging, strategic but attractive enough using simple graphic engines and DOS operating system with 5 1/4” or 3 1/2” floppy disks that we have to keep slotting in and rotating for multi-disk games. Below is a video of some of those games. Which are your favorites?
These are some of mine:
Shooter games: This was the golden period where the simulation of 3D games started with Doom, Wolfenstein 3D and ultimately we had a real 3D engine in the game Quake. Other favorites include Half-Life and Doom II.
Real-time strategy games: These games were in its renaissance period with the wonderful Command & Conquer, Warcraft and the granddaddy Starcraft.
Sandbox games: Games with no specific target, open-ended mode was pretty popular with Sid Meier’s Civilization II, SimCity 2000.
Role Playing games: Being able to play a character and grow it’s abilities is attractive and some great ones are Diablo and Ultima.
Action Adventure games: Many games fit into this description where we have many of our favorite Star Wars games including SW: Dark Forces, SW: X Wing and Tomb Raider (remember her?)
Simulation/War games: This is probably our favorite genre for its strategic thinking and stimulating challenge of winning against the PC. They include Panzer General II, The Perfect General II, Romance of the Three Kingdoms II, MechWarrior II and Wing Commander.
Gunship - learning from the 1980s
Gunship depicts one of the Western world's finest attack helicopters of that era: The AH-64A Apache. This simulation recreates the weapons, flight systems, and performance of the real machine. The player controls an arsenal that includes laser-guided Hellfire missiles, a 30mm cannon controlled by helmet gunsights, clusters of bombardment rockets – even air-to-air missiles for duels with enemy helicopters! The game starts with flight training at a base in the United States then escalating challenges and hundreds of missions in any one of four regions of the world. After selecting the region, the pilot is assigned a primary and a secondary mission. These could include objectives as "Destroy enemy headquarters" or "Support friendly troops". The latter would be an easier mission, because the battle would be fought closer to friendly lines.
What was interesting in this game was there is no defined time limit. A player can return to any number of Forward Area Resupply Points to be rearmed, refueled and have damage repaired. Returning to the Home Base will end the mission. Ideally, the pilot completes both missions, knocks out other targets, and makes it back to base within 20 minutes.
In its time, Gunship was considered “the best combat flight simulator ever released for an 8-bit computer!" Praising its graphics, weapons, sound, controls, physics, and documentation, it was THE helicopter simulation nominated by numerous computer gaming magazines. You can learn about approaching the missions with some strategic planning but mostly it was an eye-hand coordination type of game. Importantly, it showed how simulations will play a larger part in our lives especially it comes to gaming due to its complexity and sophistication.
What makes this game truly epic is if you can get a Thrustmaster joystick to play this game!
Nuclear War - learning from the 1980s
Nuclear War is a single player turn-based strategy game. It presents a satirical, cartoonish nuclear battle between five world powers. In the game, you have to blow the four opposing factions to smithereens – sometimes literally through a nuclear strike! You have various options to win, sometimes you can fire a missile or try to lure their population using propaganda. Occasionally a random event occurs, for example aliens would land on one of the factions and the population suddenly grows, or someone throws cows at the opposition, causing a major stampede and killing millions – creating some interesting repercussions to your well-laid plans!
The game is played between five players, four of which are computer controlled and chosen from a selection of 10 satirised “World Leaders” of the past decades (like Ronald Reagan or Mikhail Gorbachev). Each leader is given a country with five different populated cities and once a leader’s five cities are destroyed, he is out of the game. The objective in the game includes building up a decent arsenal, protecting your own cities and destroying the enemy ones by hurling propaganda or flaming nuclear death at them to be the last surviving player at the end.
Please note that we do not condone violence in games or in life. Remember this is a game in the 80s and as a child in those days where you get to have the “power” to make huge decisions like firing a missile is empowering! The game mechanic is interesting as it provides the player the opportunity to make strategic plans slowly due to the turn-based approach and implement, see what happens after. As various outcomes may occur after decisions are made, the game created a very real-world type decision-making matrix to see how to achieve victory. Very entertaining game!
Airborne Ranger - learning from the 1980s
This is an action game which puts the player into the role of a US army ranger. The various missions of the ranger includes destroying a bunker, discovering a missile site or even rescuing prisoners – which led to some nice diversity in this simple mouse clicking game.
The game starts rather strategically as you will be given a mission briefing and then in command of a plane flying over the mission area. You will then drop ammo crates over this enemy area before parachuting down. The mission will then play out on how well you plan your route to overcome the enemy territory (including soldiers, mines, bunkers and foxholes) while picking up fresh supplies of ammunition from the crates and achieving your stated mission.
So this wasn’t just a point and shoot game as there are additional elements of strategic and tactical planning. With the variations of missions, environments and enemies, the way to win is not always straightforward which makes it a nice puzzle in some missions. This will be a great game to reminisce how some games are still able to retain excitement and fun in a relatively simple game format. We recommend!
Check out the map and the third person view of the game.
Loderunner - learning from the 1980s
Loderunner is still one of my favorite games today. I play it occasionally on my phone but the classic version does look dated compared to some updated or similar puzzle chase game you can find in app stores or on Steam. I enjoy it for the puzzle elements, particularly how to collect the treasures buried in the ground with no visible means to retrieve it. Once I was able to break level 100, I realised there was so much more to this game because this was one of the first games that had a level editor where you could create your own mad-hatted Loderunner levels to torture your friends!
It was not just a game to me but an interesting puzzle to solve, so logical thinking skills are required to collect all treasures while avoiding the “guards” who are out to catch you,. Knowing how and when to dig is also a crucial element in solving each game level so there is spatial and timing awareness skills required as well. Understanding and planning for the end goal (the portal to take you to the next level) requires some strategic planning and also tactical skills to successfully collect all your treasures on each level. This is one of those games that wasn’t too complicated but yet challenging enough to draw many people in! You can’t do much better gaming wise in 1983!
Can you survive level 1?
TGIF - PC games in the 1980s
If you were a kid growing up in the 1980s, you might have played some of these games on the PC. Computers were prohibitive expensive those days but I was able to play with an uncle’s Mac Plus and a friend’s Pre-Pentium DOS PC in those days.
Check out this video if this brings back any memories!
My personal favorites were:
Loderunner - for all the puzzles
Karateka - for the various fighting techniques before Street Fighter
Airborne Ranger - for pretending to be a soldier playing FPS
Operation Wolf - for piloting a helicopter gunship -enough said!
Tetris - for love of polyominos
Nuclear War - because we all want to be a tyrant (some day!) and blow something up
Gunship - cos you can’t have too many helicopter gunships
So which were your favorites? We will discuss how some of these games help in educational and learning ways another time.
Forbidden Island - cooperative game by Matt Leacock
Let’s talk about Matt Leacock’s other popular cooperative game that is not part of the Pandemic series. We have Forbidden Island which is another game that requires all players to work together to defeat the game. Forbidden Island is a visually stunning board game where players take turns moving their pawns around the 'island', which is built by arranging the many beautifully screen-printed tiles before play begins. As the game progresses, more and more island tiles sink, becoming unavailable, and the pace increases. Players use strategies to keep the island from sinking, while trying to collect treasures and items to escape from the island to win.
With multiple levels of difficulty, different characters to choose from (each with a special ability of their own), many optional island formats and game variations available, Forbidden Island has huge replay value. This is a fun game which works for players of almost any age from below teens to working professionals (we have tried!). So if you are game for a shorter cooperative game without too much strategic planning but filled with good tactical experiences and requiring excellent communication skills, Forbidden Island with its beautifully designed game is for you and your team!
Matt Leacock - designer of Pandemic Legacy - game of permanent strategic choices
Matt Leacock is a game designer probably best known for creating the very popular game Pandemic. His most critically acclaimed game is undisputedly the Pandemic Legacy series (particularly Season 1 which was number one on BGG for a long while).
Pandemic Legacy is a co-operative campaign game, with an overarching story-arc played through 12-24 sessions, depending on how well your group does at the game. At the beginning, the game starts very similar to basic Pandemic, in which your team of disease-fighting specialists races against the clock to travel around the world, treating disease hotspots while researching cures for each of four plagues before they get out of hand. During the campaign, new rules and components will be introduced. These will sometimes require you to permanently alter the components of the game; this includes writing on cards, ripping up cards, and placing permanent stickers on components. Your characters can gain new skills, or detrimental effects. A character can even be lost entirely, at which point it's no longer available for play.
So this way of playing games where there are changes to the rules and components of a game is called a legacy system – think of it as a “choose your own adventure” type game where there are permanent repercussions to every single decision the players make when you play a game. So if you want to teach your team about strategic choices and the effects of change, this would be a fantastic game to play.
Matt Leacock - designer of Pandemic, cooperative game
Matt Leacock is a game designer probably best known for creating the very popular game Pandemic. He has been designing games full time since 2014. Prior to that he was a user experience designer at Sococo, Yahoo!, AOL, Netscape, and Apple. Matt specializes in designing family games and have become known for cooperative games since the success of Pandemic and Forbidden Island.
In Pandemic, several virulent diseases have broken out simultaneously all over the world! The players are disease-fighting specialists whose mission is to treat disease hotspots while researching cures for each of four plagues before they get out of hand. The game board depicts several major population centers on Earth. On each turn, a player can use up to four actions to travel between cities, treat infected populaces, discover a cure, or build a research station. Taking a unique role within the team, players must plan their strategy to mesh with their specialists' strengths in order to conquer the diseases. For example, the Operations Expert can build research stations which are needed to find cures for the diseases and which allow for greater mobility between cities; the Scientist needs only four cards of a particular disease to cure it instead of the normal five—but the diseases are spreading quickly and time is running out. If one or more diseases spreads beyond recovery or if too much time elapses, the players all lose. If they cure the four diseases, they all win!
This game was probably the one that introduced the cooperative game where players get to work together rather than compete against each other. Although the theme of this game hits close to home with the covid pandemic, it is exactly this reason why this is such a good game to play to demonstrate the spread of infection and why it takes a strong global response to beat such a major crisis. Due to this game’s success, Matt followed up with more similar Pandemic-themed games that we will be sharing this week.
