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Topic: Learning Arimaa, Teaching Arimaa (Read 3104 times) |
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Jacka
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Learning Arimaa, Teaching Arimaa
« on: Nov 8th, 2011, 3:36pm » |
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Hello everyone,
I'm Jack, I'm a musician and music teacher living in Northern California, and I'm closing in on my first month of infatuation with Arimaa. After 45 games here, and a few more on my Ipad, I'm finding I can beat the easiest few bots, but still make blunders that ruin quite a few games. Slowly, though, I feel that I'm starting to develop a bit of Arimaa 'vision', and I have the impression that I just need to spend a lot more time in this world to develop both my analytical and intuitive abilities at the game.
I'm in an interesting situation in that as I learn I've already begun to teach the game! First, my three kids ages 14, 11 and 8 began to wonder what I was doing with all my time, and I was surprised how easily they grasped the rules, even across that age range. I also volunteer to teach chess in their school--I teach in four different classes about once a week each across grades 3-8 (ages 7-14 or so.) I ordered six discounted sets from Omar (thanks again!) and what I've done is to put one or two out along with the dozen or so chess boards in the classroom. Naturally, the animals attract a lot of interest, and usually one game gets started with several onlookers. I try to present the rules 'as we go' across the first few moves, discussing the relative strength of the pieces, traps, pushing and pulling, and later freezing and scoring a goal with the rabbits. It's a lot of information, but surprisingly, most of the kids seeming to grasp the game quite quickly, even more so than chess I would say. I'm just beginning this process, and I haven't yet put out all six boards or tried to teach the group as a whole, so I will have much more to say about all of this as I proceed.
I'd very much like to start a discussion with others who have tried to teach the game, or who are thinking about it. What are the best practices we can share? It's been easy to do under the auspices of teaching chess, which has so much credibility with teachers--I wonder if more persuasion would be necessary if you were to try to teach the game alone. I'd like to discuss what sort of handicaps or simplifications others have tried while teaching the game. And I'd love to hear stories of anyone else who has tried to launch Arimaa within a school.
I do believe that it's very important for the development of the game that we learn how to teach it. Chess has so much for the beginning to intermediate learner--beginning strategy books, tactics books, software, cartoon teaching books...--and longer term I'm wondering what we can do about developing materials for kids and other beginners. Not everyone will play 50-100 games to start the learning process, and any written materials or software would have to be extremely simplified and diagrammatic, I think, to appeal to kids. So I'd like to get a discussion going about developing a good library of materials and resources that those who want to teach can draw on.
Thanks again for this wonderful game and community. I plan on sticking around awhile, both for my own learning and to promote teaching the game.
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chessandgo
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Re: Learning Arimaa, Teaching Arimaa
« Reply #1 on: Nov 8th, 2011, 5:16pm » |
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Congrats and good luck! Simplicity of the rules was one of Omar's aims, and he did well at that. I fear I'm not proficient in teaching ways, but I'll read the discussion with interest!
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Nombril
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Re: Learning Arimaa, Teaching Arimaa
« Reply #2 on: Nov 8th, 2011, 9:07pm » |
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My daughter had the same question about the game that I was spending so much time with, so I did teach a simplified version to her. She was 3 at the time, so we probably simplified it more than you would need to.
Some ideas are at these threads:
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=talk;action=display;nu m=1263437318
http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=talk;action=display;nu m=1285211772
Though both are a bit old, so if anyone has additional thoughts, I'm sure there are plenty of people interested. Plus I think you are looking for a something possibly more structured for progressing through learning different aspects of the game... a very good question indeed.
I assume you saw the 5min video on how to play, if that would be a good starting point for kids and a quick presentation?
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clojure
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Re: Learning Arimaa, Teaching Arimaa
« Reply #3 on: Nov 9th, 2011, 12:28am » |
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Well, I have made this site for specifical purpose of self-learning: http://personal.inet.fi/koti/egaga/arimaa-begin/tutorial.html
It's not really targeted for children but I guess some could find it easier to try it out without anyone being at present.
An interactive step-by-step guide would be useful, too.
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Fritzlein
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Re: Learning Arimaa, Teaching Arimaa
« Reply #4 on: Nov 11th, 2011, 5:45pm » |
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Thanks for sharing, Jacka. I have heard other Arimaa fans say that Arimaa is easier to learn than chess, but I always wonder if the folks reporting that are biased by liking Arimaa better than they like chess. The comparison counts for more coming from someone like yourself who has taught both Arimaa and chess, in some cases to the same students. It bodes well for the long-term future of Arimaa that chess youngsters easily take a shine to it and don't immediately turn up their noses like chess oldsters are prone to do.
I quite agree that teaching techniques will be critical to popularizing Arimaa. There's a certain audience to which Arimaa can sell itself, but a much broader audience needs someone to help them get up and running. Like some other members of the community, I have done a bit of thinking about how to teach Arimaa, but always with an adult audience in mind. I look forward to hearing your reflections about how best to teach kids.
Material handicaps work fine in Arimaa; I have learned it is good to give an elephant handicap to anyone whom I have just taught. Probably even better than handicap games are Omar's suggestion of games with a reduced piece set. That lets folks get familiar with all the mechanics, plus the games won't last long if the starting position is an "endgame" by normal standards, such that breakthrough to goal comes quickly.
But within all these advantages, there is probably some fine tuning to be done to get the optimal mix. For example, Omar suggests four rabbits and two cats. My intuition is strongly that four rabbits, a cat, and a dog would be better. Adding the dog doesn't make the rules more complex or the game longer, but it does add strategic scope and introduce the single dominant piece that will be encountered with a full set. Still, one would have to experiment to know whether the added complexity is confusing or engaging. etc.
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Jacka
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Re: Learning Arimaa, Teaching Arimaa
« Reply #5 on: Nov 11th, 2011, 6:43pm » |
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Hi all,
Thanks for the responses so far. Clojure, I like your website and particularly your 'Shortened rules' summary which appears next to the pieces--may I use it? I was thinking about reprinting it and perhaps laminating a batch as bookmarks for the kids.
I taught another session with my chess students yesterday. The kids don't need material handicaps with each other, of course, at least not at first. What I'm doing so far is to show the game first with the full 16 pieces per side, especially since the students take particular delight in the variety of animals in the game. After we play through a few moves per side just to demonstrate how the moves, traps and freezes work, I suggest a game with a reduced number of pieces. And Fritzlein, I agree with your intuition that a heirarchy of 3 or more piece strengths be used, but with a less cluttered, more open board with some chances for quick rabbit scoring. So in fact yesterday we were using 4 rabbits, and any 3 other single different pices per side. That helped everyone learn pretty fast that you want your elephant, camel and a horse!
This much was somewhat like teaching chess with an endgame setup--I've always found kids like these quick games of checkmate, especially with uneven material setup.
Other impressions--
Kids really like being to set up their pieces their own way. I've said very little about how to do it, but quite a few intuit that the elephant should be up front in the middle with rabbits behind or on the wings.
Perhaps like adults, kids try a wide variety of strategies at first. Quite a few race their rabbits in a blitz forward. A few clustered their pieces in safe herds around home traps. And one kid won his first game by marauding around only with his elephand and picking off stray forward pieces.
Students have a bit of trouble at first seeing when a piece is frozen. Also a few needed to be reminded about when traps are supported. Some tend to think, perhaps from chess, that diagonals work too.
Interestingly, many of the students played a game or two of chess first--that's what they already know the rules to, and some seemed a bit cautious about taking on something new. Then they got interested in Arimaa as they saw others playing and felt more ready for something new. I thing the idea of having several game choices available--Arimaa, Chess, Go, each introduced over a month or two--is a very promising direction for what began as a chess class.
Mostly what seems to work so far is to let the students have at it and play, and then to answer questions as they arrive. I had three boards going, so that involved a bit of quick moving around, but it seems to work better than a larger scale preplanned lecture about the rules. In other words, no need to be an expert teacher, just someone who is light on their feet! Anyone else feel like trying this?
Jack
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clojure
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Re: Learning Arimaa, Teaching Arimaa
« Reply #6 on: Nov 12th, 2011, 1:56am » |
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I am happy if you found it useful, and you can print the rules if you like. See this page for project information, and source code (if you need): https://bitbucket.org/egaga/arimaa-tutorial/wiki/Home
The images and the ownership of the official game rules are of Omar's but I think the full license, and your case fits #1, I think: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/license/current.txt
Notice the license in tutorial Bitbucket page: the license section is different (#3) because of distributing software so if you like to copy the software to other site, you would need permission from Omar.
But yeah, I've written the exact words of shortened rules, and anyone is free to use them however they want (if it's up to me only).
- Henrik
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| « Last Edit: Nov 12th, 2011, 2:00am by clojure » |
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omar
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Re: Learning Arimaa, Teaching Arimaa
« Reply #7 on: Nov 12th, 2011, 11:44pm » |
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Jack, welcome to the Arimaa community and thanks for sharing this with us. You are definitely breaking new grounds by introducing Arimaa to students. Actually about a year ago, there was a high school math teacher who emailed me that he introduced Arimaa at his school. But you are working with much younger students.
Introducing Arimaa to students is definitely important for the future of Arimaa. Actually I think it is also very good for the students future as well. I am sure you know about the numerous studies that have been done showing that exposure to chess helps improve concentration, logic, reasoning, planning, pattern recognition, etc. and this in turns has a positive impact on academics. In addition to the benefits offered by chess, I think Arimaa has the added benefit of being easier to learn and emphasizing creativity over memorization. Being easier to learn makes it accessible to more students; thus I think a larger number of students would find it easier to get started with Arimaa. Emphasizing creativity over memorization will allow more students to stay with it longer. I was at a lecture once and a chess instructor was mentioning how hard it was to get kids to stick with chess after they enter middle school or high school. I know this was around the time when I started realizing that to continue getting better at chess I would have to start memorizing openings. I remember that was a big turn off for me. But I still continued playing chess causally.
I hope you continue to keep us updated on your progress.
Regarding the license. For personal, educational and research use there is no need to obtain a license or authorization.
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