John Driscoll

LIS 723 Play Portfolio

Card Game: Hanabi
In Hanabi, players take on the role of fireworks manufacturers who have
lost the plans to their fireworks show and must work together to figure out what
fireworks to launch when and make the best show possible without making too
many mistakes and causing an explosion. To do so, players must play cards
from the five suits in order before the deck runs out. However, players cannot
see their own cards, and must rely on limited hints from other players to know
what they have. At the end, scores are tallied up to determine how good of a
fireworks show the players created.
I played Hanabi with two of my friends, both of whom had played the
game before and easily explained the rules to me without my needing to read
them. We played three games, which lasted for about half an hour each (except
for the time we accidentally set off the explosion and the game ended early). I
was also able to teach my mother the game (who does not pick up new games
too easily) with a minimum of fuss, which confirms that its easy to pick up and
play. More importantly, it was fun because of the challenge of understanding
each others hints in order to make the right plays.
Hanabi forces players to be thoughtful and creative with the hints they give
to other players. Hints must consist of information about one specific color or
number value of cards. For example, You have two fives or you have one red
card are acceptable hints, combined with pointing to the cards in question. The
player given the hint must then try to remember the information they have been
given so that they can decide whether to play the card, save it for later, or discard

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it in order to gain another hint token. This game play encourages collaboration,
clear communication under restricted conditions, remembering details to put
together information players have given each other, and paying attention to what
has been played and discarded in order to make strategic decisions.
Hanabi is intended for ages 8 and up, can be played by 2-5 players, takes
roughly thirty minutes to play, and only a few minutes to learn. Because it can be
learned and played so quickly, Hanabi is much more suitable than many other
board or card games for a library program that might be limited to only 60 or 90
minutes of game time.
Although its not a competitive game, multiple copies of the game could be
used for groups to compete against each other for a prize. With an MSRP of
$10.95, Hanabi is inexpensive by card game standards, so a library could have
several copies. Alternatively, the game could be part of a rotation of games that
groups could play together as part of a larger competition. It could be a game
component of a youth or young adult program about fireworks, or part of a
workshop about building collaboration and teamwork.

Mobile App: Duolingo

I downloaded the Duolingo app for my smartphone, which is a free
language learning tool. I have an Android phone, but Duolingo is also available
for iPhones and iPads. Upon opening the program, I had the choice to create an
account or sign in with a Facebook or Google account. I got an error message
trying to log in with Facebook, but creating an account took less than a minute.

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The app offers Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, and Italian, with a
button marked more at the bottom. Clicking that lets you learn any of those
languages from another language besides English, or learn English from one of
those languages. I chose to learn Spanish, and since I dont know much Spanish
I didnt try to test out of the basic lessons.
Lessons consist of quiz questions with simple game elements mixed in,
which I think increases the appeal to children and young adults, who could easily
use this app to start learning a language or as a supplemental tool for language
classes in school. Most lessons start with a multiple choice question, such as
Choose the word that means water, and you have four words accompanied by
pictures to choose from. When you highlight an answer, whether its correct or
not, the word is spoken aloud. Other exercises include translating simple
phrases from English to Spanish or vice versa, hearing a phrase aloud and then
typing it in Spanish or translating it to English, or speaking a phrase into the
microphone. The game elements that are mixed in include a life bar, which
decreases when you get questions wrong, and Lingots, a currency you earn for
completing lessons and can spend on power-ups such as a life refill. The app
also includes a leaderboard so that users can compare their scores with friends,
which I think is a great idea.
I completed the first three lessons, which took 10-15 minutes each.
However, I didnt like that Duolingo started me off with questions right away,
instead of giving me a few words to learn first. I did notice that on questions
where I had to translate a Spanish phrase to English, unfamiliar or new words

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LIS 723 Play Portfolio
were often hyperlinked so I could tap them and see what they translated to,
which made the exercises easier.
Another issue I had is that some words taught in the first couple lessons
seemed like odd choices. While man and woman are certainly important
words to start off with, Im not sure milk and apple are so important that they
need to be in the first or second lesson before words like live and work, or
phrases like how are you?
Overall, Duolingo is a useful language-learning tool, but by itself it doesnt
seem enough to truly learn a language. It would be best used to supplement
other tools such as Mango Languages or the librarys language books. And of
course, none of these things are a substitute for a formal language class. If I
designed a library program to teach the basics of a language like Spanish (which
I think would be a good idea in multilingual communities), I would not use
Duolingo during the actual program time, but would include it on a list of
resources offered to library patrons, and would also consider mentioning it in a
library blog or on the website even if I were not running a language program,
perhaps on a list of useful suggested apps. Another way to use the app in a
library setting would be to reward young patrons for reaching certain scores in
learning a language, similar to a summer reading program. Teens or kids
(probably with a parents permission) could join a common leaderboard, which
the librarian in charge would oversee to monitor the scores of participants, and
prizes could be awarded for reaching certain scores.

John Driscoll
LIS 723 Play Portfolio
iPad app: BrainPOP
I used a library iPad to try the BrainPOP app, which tries to add a bit of fun
to learning for kids. BrainPOP also exists on other platforms and online since it
was founded in 1999, although this was my first encounter with it. While I also
accessed some content through their website for comparison purposes, I
primarily focused on the app.
BrainPOP covers educational subjects across many areas of learning with
a short animated video of 3-5 minutes and a 10 question multiple choice quiz,
which can be taken before the video to test your prior knowledge or afterward to
see what you learned. Not all BrainPOP videos and lessons are free (most
require a paid subscription), but there are at least twenty free videos, including a
daily featured video. The featured video when I tried the app was called
Humans and the Environment, which was a special for Earth Day.
In order to test it out, I watched videos and took quizzes on such diverse
subjects as the environment, cells, nutrition, blogs, the Civil War, and
Shakespeare. When watching videos through the website, I found that in
addition to the quiz, each subject had additional activities, question and answer
sections, and an FYI: Read More page that contained additional information on
the subject. The Q&A sections are only available with a subscription, but the
quiz, activity sheets, and FYI pages are free. I did not see these extra materials
when using the app, but its possible they are available with a subscription.
BrainPOP is intended for children in grades 3 and above, and since the
videos do use some technical and scientific language such as heterotrophic, it

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LIS 723 Play Portfolio
probably wouldnt be suitable for younger children. Although the information
contained in such short videos is necessarily basic and abbreviated, it seems to
be of high quality. For example, the Civil War video does not go into detail about
why Confederate states seceded, but does point out that Lincolns Emancipation
Proclamation freed slaves only in rebel states, not in slave-holding states that
remained in the Union.
BrainPOP videos follow a formula: main character Tim explains the topic
while his robotic sidekick Moby makes an occasional beep that Tim interprets as
a question or statement. Moby also adds humor to keep the videos lighthearted
and fun; for example, at the end of the video on nutrition, Tim sees Moby eating a
candy bar dipped in mayonnaise, to which he responds, Okay, normally I say
everything in moderation, but thats just wrong.
In a library setting, the BrainPOP app has a variety of uses. If a youth
department has iPads or other tablets available for kids or parents to use, then
this would be an excellent app to have installed. Even with just the free content,
BrainPOP can provide several hours of educational material in an interesting and
fun way that will appeal to elementary school kids. In addition, according to the
About BrainPOP video, it can also be used with an interactive whiteboard or
projector to use with a group. With this setup, a small group of kids or even an
entire class could participate and then discuss their answers during the quiz.
Using the app in a group setting would also provide a great opportunity to
promote library materials that have more information about these subjects for
those who might become interested.

John Driscoll
LIS 723 Play Portfolio

iPad app: Musical Me! HD

While using that borrowed iPad, I also explored a musical app called
Musical Me! HD. Musical Me is a music fundamentals program that has five
simple activities for children ages 3 and up. These activities, accompanied by a
cute mascot called Mozzarella the Mouse, teach young children the basics of
dance, rhythm, memory, music notes, and instruments. Kids can switch
seamlessly from one activity to the next my touching Mozzarella, which changes
the screen instantly to the next activity.
The first activity is very simple, and involves a few cute animals dancing
along to one of the fourteen or so famous childrens songs in this app. You can
move the animals around the screen or make them bigger. Theres also a button
in one corner of the screen to change tracks if youre not interested in Yankee
Doodle Dandy or Shell Be Comin Round the Mountain. Overall, this is
definitely the simplest and least interactive activity in this app.
The next activity is about rhythm. A childs voice tells you to touch the
birds to play the song. A simple beat starts up, and then a bunch of birds will fly
slowly across the screen. Touching a bird plays one note of the song, then that
bird flies away. You can touch the birds out of sequence, but the notes will
always play in correct order. Birds fly slowly so theyre easy to touch, but if you
try to play too fast then you can end up running out of birds and waiting for the
rest to hurry up and arrive so you can play more of the song. Like the previous
game, you can switch to another song if you want to.

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LIS 723 Play Portfolio
The third activity teaches memory with three to five cute little planets
(depending on the difficulty you choose) that sing musical notes. They play a
short series of notes, and then you tap them to recreate the sequence. The
emphasis is solely on sequence, and the app doesnt care if you replay the
rhythm correctly. Even though this activity is set in outer space, a cow will
occasionally stick her head in, and you can tap it to make her moo and fly away.
Activity number four, which teaches musical notes, is the most complex
part of the app. A musical phrase from one of the songs appears on a music
staff, accompanied by a play button that plays the melody depicted on screen.
You can move the notes up or down, changing their pitch. Its very simple and
you cant rearrange the notes or change their length, but there is a button to
change instruments, so you can have your melody played by a piano, violin,
synthesizer, or vocals. There are also cute little fish and crabs hanging around
on the screen that you can tap which make noises.
The final activity involves simple musical instruments. One of the songs
will play, and you can accompany the music by touching instruments like drums,
maracas, cymbals, or a rubber duck. Switching instruments is only one tap, so
its easy to move between them freely. Theres also a frog nearby that you can
tap to make him croak and eat flies.
Musical Me is a simple and fun way for a child to play with musical
concepts on the iPad. Its definitely most appropriate for 3 and 4 year olds, as
older children would probably get bored after exploring each activity for a minute
or two. The app teaches not only basic musical concepts, but allows for some

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creative play as well with the musical notes, or if kids choose to go off script
and play with the other activities in different ways. The best way to use it in a
library seems to be just to have Musical Me on library iPads, and let kids play
with them one on one. It would be difficult to have more than one or two kids
play with an individual tablet at one time, and the apps target audience is
probably too young to sit still while showing off their musical creations to each
other. I would definitely recommend having the app for kids to play with
individually, though.

John Driscoll
LIS 723 Play Portfolio
Resources:
BrainPOP. "BrainPOP - Animated Educational Site for Kids - Science, Social
Studies, English, Math, Arts." Web. 22 Apr. 2014. <http://www.brainpop.com/>.

BrainPOP. About BrainPOP Overview Video. Web. 22 Apr. 2014.

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_0RIlm7n-Q>

"Musical Me!" Duck Duck Moose, Inc. Web. 22 Apr. 2014.

<http://www.duckduckmoose.com/educational-iphone-itouch-apps-forkids/musical-me/>.

Duolingo. Duolingo. Google Play Store. Vers. 2.3.4. Duolingo. Web. 20 Apr.
2014. <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.duolingo>.

Hanabi. R&R Card Games, 2013. Played 18 Apr. 2014. Website:

<http://www.rnrgames.com/Product.aspx?id=094923ac-56f1-47f2-8f522d8f097c61ac>

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