[View the video of the workshop]

Our second informant design workshop was held over two days during school holidays in order give students an opportunity to work together with students from a school, outside of school in a different environment, to brainstorm and develop ideas about dinosaurs, fossils, and the prehistoric environment by beginning to draft stories about dinosaurs based on their interests and ideas. Sixteen students participated this time

We intended to encourage diverse voices from students for the game scenario, but at the same time attempted to create commonalities of experience by getting the students more immersed in ideas surrounding dinosaurs by having activities centered around the dinosaur exhibits and Omni theatre movie at the Singapore Science Centre and the Evolution Garden at the Singapore Botanical Gardens. In the picture above students and a facilitator are reading some descriptions in the garden. These experiences would be then integrated into their funds of knowledge, from which the students were invited to co-create and share stories about dinosaurs, and later-on create short digital movies from them - essentially enabling their voices to be established firmly.

In general, students were interested in knowing the lives and habits of dinosaurs (e.g., what they eat, how many eggs they lay), comparing dinosaurs and human-beings (e.g., if they have same organs as human, if they have more bones than human), and paleontology practices (e.g., how to name a new dinosaur who is discovered, how to carry the bones to the lab). The essential components of games that attract students include: action and fighting, strategy, role–playing, multi edition, ease of play, multi server, cute characters, and strong characters. For their movies, the common characteristic across different groups was “role-playing.” They liked to play the role of paleontologists who find fossils of dinosaurs.