One of the coolest experiences I had at mLearnCon last week was playing A Game of Phones, a wonderful creation from Kris Rockwell (@hybridkris) and Alicia Sanchez (@gamesczar). Every attendee received a deck of cards when he or she registered, and a brief tutorial of how to play.
The basic premise is training and performance challenges presented to two or more players, who can then play technology, hardware and expert cards to offer up a potential solution. Both players state their case, and then they can either debate or they can have a third party judge their proposals.
At the end of the day on Wednesday, they held a tournament, judged by none other than The Beard and Jason Haag. Surprisingly, there were only eight of us who entered, but the ideas generated in this tournament were simply amazing. The energy level was high and the debates and follow-up discussions with the judges and participants were enlightening. Aaron or Kris should be posting some video and pictures of the event soon.
The three top scorers were myself, Stephanie Daul and Aisha Taylor. The final battle was between Stephanie and myself, and I ended up winning. It was so much fun, and such a useful game. I can’t wait to take it back to some folks I work with to generate some ideas for solving our mobile learning problems, or just to start talking about mobile solutions.
You can order the game as is, or you can request some tweaks to make it more specific to your organization. I highly recommend at least grabbing a deck or two and playing a few games with your team and then sharing some of the best solutions with management, and then playing the game with them! It’s a great way to show the benefits of a game in a real world environment that produces innovative, but practical solutions.
Most importantly, it was a lot of fun to play!
Additional Information:
*Update 07-08-2011*
The website for this game is agameofphones.com.
Thanks for a great write-up, Brian! How do you order the game?
I’m awaiting instructions from the developers. I’ll be updating this post as soon as I have the info.
At the bottom of agameofphones.com there’s info on ordering. Basically get in touch with Kris or Alicia. It’s awesome.
Brian, it says on the cards “to purchase additional cards for your organization, please contact us at AGameOfPhones@gmail.com.”
Ahh, perfect. Thanks Judy!