May 04, 2004

Nomic

Nomic is . . . a game in which changing the rules is a move. The Initial Set of rules does little more than regulate the rule-changing process.”

Wally H. comments: “Nomic would be the perfect tool . . . for teaching computer programming, i.e. for teaching algorithm design, data structures, resource management, analytic problem-solving methodology, &c.”

Posted by mgk at May 4, 2004 03:05 PM
Comments

Hey Matt -

My blog is currently unupdatable, but I wanted to mention that I have a 6- or 7-page essay on the topic online at http://web.mit.edu/mr_mole/www/nomic-resnick.pdf, written for Mitchel Resnick's class on tools for teaching programming (at the MIT Media Lab). Like most of what I write, it's neither as concrete nor as rigorous as it should be, yet it manages also to be insufficiently wide-ranging and airy. In short: a student paper. :)

Still, the paper bears mentioning, if for no other reason than to demonstrate that Nomic could be both enjoyable playable by normal human beings and profitably used in a classroom setting. If you're curious about the topic and have the half-hour to spare, I'd love to hear what you think of the paper.

--Wally (aka Wax Banks)

Posted by: Wally at May 6, 2004 12:16 PM | Link to Comment

Thanks Wally, I'll definitely take a look . . .

Posted by: MGK at May 6, 2004 02:35 PM | Link to Comment
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