FEATURES - GAMES, NE-ONE?

You have just received news about a massive terrorist plot, and you need to foil the attack by quickly planning and indicating 10 strategic locations to deploy troops around the island.

That is just one of more than 40 different scenarios which students can play in The Rise of Li Ttledot, a PC-based game that pits two teams against each other to defend or attack the fictional island of Li Ttledot.

Sounds like fun? This is not just any off-the-shelf strategy game, but one that centres around the theme of Total Defence.

Players take on the role of secret agents who are each experts in one of the five pillars of Total Defence military, civil, economic, social and psychological defence executing various missions to affect the happiness levels of the country s population.

Said creator CPL (NS) Ong, who developed the game together with four of his colleagues: "When we first came up with the project, we wanted it to be something where students would have to actively think about NE and Total Defence, because we felt that the idea of Total Defence is a very broad and deep concept that can be quite difficult for children in primary schools to really grasp."

He noted: "It can be difficult to teach something that seems as abstract as NE, and simply reading the history of Singapore can get quite boring, especially for primary school students who tend to have shorter attention spans.

"Words on a page don t come to life as much as a computer game, so we wanted to create an interesting game that engages students and allows them to draw a parallel to Singapore."

Fun and (NE) games

Initially conceived as a class project during his days at the National Institute of Education in 2006, the idea quickly blossomed as CPL (NS) Ong realised that Total Defence was "a great concept to build a lesson on, because you can construct so many different scenarios under the topic of Total Defence".

The scenarios range from discussing economic defence as part of a maths lesson to alluding to civil defence when teaching health education. This means greater flexibility in lesson-planning for teachers, as well as a rich learning experience for students, he explained.

While the game aims to develop students thinking, comprehension and analytical skills through multiple-choice questions (MCQs) based on Total Defence and subjects like English, Maths and Science, perhaps the most important aspect of the game lies in emphasising collaboration and teamwork.

To do well in the game, the players have to pull together and function as a group to gather relevant information and make smart decisions. A dialogue box was included in the game design, allowing team-mates to interact and ask for help when needed.

Pointing out that Total Defence revolves around everyone playing their part, he said: "Winning isn t something you can do on your own in this game... The students need to collaborate with one another."

You can do NE-thing

To be launched in February as part of the Primary Five students Social Studies curriculum at Anglo-Chinese School (Junior), The Rise of Li Ttledot has come a long way from its early pen-and-paper stages.

Encouraged by his school principal, CPL (NS) Ong applied for funding from the Ministry of Education to push his idea further and make it a full-fledged computer game that could provide a strong audio-visual stimulus for students.

Together with his project team-mates, he worked with external vendors to design the graphics and gameplay, approached fellow teachers for help in expanding their MCQ content, and sourced for video footage from the Ministry of Defence and the Singapore Civil Defence Force.

This was no easy task, as all five project members still had to balance their primary jobs as teachers while working on the project and gathering resources on their own time.

But for CPL (NS) Ong, seeing their ideas come to fruition has made all the effort worthwhile.

"You don t just immediately become a dedicated soldier when you change your IC (identity card) for your SAF 11B (the Singapore Armed Forces military IC)," said CPL (NS) Ong, who served at Headquarters Republic of Singapore Navy during his National Service.

"That commitment and dedication in serving your country comes over time, and I think that teaching children about Total Defence should start from a young age, and that education is absolutely fundamental if you want to create a solid defence force."