Free Game Giveaway

As mentioned last week, I put an edition of my card game King for a Day up for sale on The Game Crafter. It was previously only available in a cheap black & white edition or as a print-and-play game. With only a few copies out there, it still got some good comments and a review on its page at the Boardgame Geek. I finally decided this year to make a nice color edition with the help of my daughter.

To draw more attention to the project, I'm giving away a free copy. See the details below to enter to win.

The game would be useful in the middle or high school classroom as it requires good communication skills from start to finish. Strategy, negotiation and careful management of resources are also required to play well. After years of playtesting the game with students, I know it goes over well with teens.

I am also featuring the game here to promote The Game Crafter site because I think it can be used for some excellent classroom projects. With some additional time spent on graphics, students can produce very nice copies of their game through the site.

So how can you win? There are three ways to enter and if you enter in multiple ways you get entered multiple times. On February 12, 2012 I will randomly draw one entry from all submitted.

• If you have a Facebook account, Like the King for a Day Card Game page on Facebook.
• If you have a Boardgame Geek account, be a fan of the game on its page. (Don't just "Like" it there because I won't know who did it. Click the Become a Fan link in the upper right of the page.)
• If you want to be notified about what I'm doing or discovering in classroom technology and games, follow this blog by clicking the Join this site button at the right.

If you have already done any of those things, you're already entered even if you don't know it!

I will contact the winner after I randomly select an entry. Once I get a mailing address, I will

order a copy of the game and have it shipped to the address. (Please understand, however, that am restricting the giveaway to continental U.S. addresses only.) This drawing is not affiliated with any sites mentioned above.

Free Game Giveaway and Back to Work

There's a chance I'll move the free game giveaway to another site and extend it, but I'll still give a game to a winner as described in the original post. If you haven't entered, check it out. It is free and takes about 1 minute.

Work officially started this week, so that accounts for the lack of posts. It's been hectic, but I have remembered how much I love Jing the past few days. It is indispensable for the work I do communicating with text and images.

Beyond that, I'm working two to four technology classes this year, so I hope to have plenty to highlight in the weeks ahead.

I did put up an Oh, Really! flipchart for Christian education. I figure it will be my least popular on Promethean Planet, but I think it has value. A new, exciting project will be tested within the week and I hope to post it by next weekend. If it goes as well as I hope it should be a good series.

What Matters Most in School? -- Promotion for Oh, Really!

It is my goal to have thousands of students all over the world having fun and discussing the things that matter most this year in school. I’m doing that by giving away a free copy of my party game Oh, Really!--"The Lively Game of What Matters Most"-- and by highlighting my free classroom activities.

The free activities are available on Promethean Planet here:

• My Back to School version of Oh, Really!
• All activities based on Oh, Really! with versions for various subject areas
• All of my free games activities

Keep reading for details on how you can win a copy of the game.

To help with this promotion, I asked Bernie DeKoven to (sort of) play Oh, Really! with us and to share his thoughts on the game. In case you don’t know, Bernie wrote the book on games and fun (as well as the blog, articles and other books). He has decades of experience with games in the classroom.

And several years ago his review of my simple party game helped me take the next step in publication. As someone who has played Oh, Really! in various forms almost as long as I have, here’s what he has to say about my game and what’s most important in the classroom:

For me, a game like Oh, Really is an opportunity for people to have fun (which I personally rank the highest) talking to each other (next highest) about things they care about, listening to others about things other people care about, exercising reason, becoming aware of different, but equally valid perspectives.

All of these, from the fun part to the reasoning part to the learning to accept and understand differences, belong in the classroom as much as they belong in the courtroom and at least as much as they belong at the family dinner table.

None of these have immediate relevance to anything that is generally identified as a learning objective in anybody's curriculum. And yet the impact on the students, on the relationship between them, and between them and the teacher, and between them, the teacher, and the learning enterprise, is welcome and often profound. It sets the stage for learning and understanding and wanting to learn together.

Thanks Bernie for your support of Oh, Really! and for always sounding the call for positive classroom experiences that remind us what matters most in education!

The Giveaway
I asked Bernie to rank the five words from Oh, Really! below from most important to least important. If you want to be entered in a drawing for the game, please visit this link. There you will rank the five items that Bernie was given:

• Tradition
• Attitude
• Teachers
• Goals
• Laughter

From all entries that I receive by September 16, 2011 (whether they match Bernie’s rankings or not) I will draw a winner who will receive a copy of the game. (See below for restrictions and other information.)

Here are the cards from the game that I sent to Bernie. Rank them in order from most important to least important as you think he would:

Tradition Attitude Teachers Goals Laughter

Details on the giveaway:

• This is solely my promotion for the game, as the game’s creator. Neither Bernie DeKoven nor Find It Games (the publisher of Oh, Really!) is responsible for the selection of the winner or sending the prize.
• I will send one copy of the published party game Oh, Really! to the winner. (Depending on shipping costs we might work out a different arrangement if the winner is outside of the continental U.S., but I’ll make sure we come up with something equivalent in terms of cost.)
• I will select a random entry from all that I receive as described above shortly after September 16, 2011. The winner will be contacted and announced here on the blog after that time.