Rune Johansen
Vocational teacher – ICT service
Askim videregående skole, Norway

Keep talking and nobody explodes

At first glance it does not seem that a game with the name “Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes” and education would be a good combination. But if we take a deeper look at what the game requires for success it begins to make more sense.

The main goal with playing “Keep talking and nobody explodes” is to practice and develop collaboration skills, improve the student’s concentration, and help them improve in creative thinking. It is also a good game to help students learn to read and speak foreign languages.

Competences developed through the lesson could be computational thinking, transdisciplinary and design mindset.

The game was tested in Collegi Sant Roc in Alcoy, Spain during October and the pupils that tested it was at age 15-16 years old.

In this lesson I used the game “Keep talking and nobody explodes” downloaded from https://keeptalkinggame.com/. The game is also on Steam but since Steam is not allowed at the school network, I had to download from the website. The bombmanual can be downloaded from http://www.bombmanual.com/ in many languages and some unofficial manuals can be downloaded from https://bombmanual.github.io/

To play the game you divide the class into groups of each 3-4 students. The groups take turns on who is observing and who is playing the game. Each group then decide which student plays the role as "disarmer" (1 student) and the rest of the group plays the roles as "bomb experts". The teacher gives the group time to study the bomb manual and to make a strategy on how to divide the tasks required to disarm the bomb. The groups that aren’t disarming are observing to give feedback to the bomb groups communication and collaboration skills. If the communication is bad, the bomb explodes. You could only make three mistakes. Then the next group play the game.

The feedback I got from the students was very positive. They had never played a game like this and they were very enthusiastic and engaged. The immediate reaction: can we play more. They experienced the importance of practicing communication skills to solve problems.

What did I like about my lesson?

I liked that the students got so engaged and that everybody agreed that they learnt some communication skills. I wished I had more time so they could play more rounds. Then we could try to have the disarmer and bomb expert in different rooms so they could have tried communicating with mobile phones and not hear any response from classmates etc. Then the students could see how much body language have to say for good communication.