Crypto Coordinates & Children’s Morality
The mathematics mission Crypto Coordinates: Plotting Adventure! was first released last fall, and updated slightly in early June. Both versions of Crypto teach coordinate plotting through the context of archeology and navigation of a magical island. During implementations of Crypto, researchers observed students expressing their own beliefs when playing the game.
Research has shown that even very young children have beliefs or intuitions of right and wrong. In the game world of Crypto, questers must decide whether to respect the island’s rules or uncover its secrets, particularly, whether to take artifacts out of the jungle or leave them undisturbed. This is a key dilemma in archeology; to whom to artifacts belong, and where should they be displayed? 
On the one hand, countless countries have been robbed of precious artifacts and keys to their history by other nations who are more powerful or have more resources. On the other hand, if artifacts stay only with the site where they were discovered, then peoples around the world lose an opportunity to better understand others’ histories. These tensions are exactly what the questers are asked to contend with.
As an example, one character, Archie, offers the quester cols in exchange for artifacts they remove from the island and deliver.
He also notes the importance of allowing others to learn about the important history of the island. Thus questers may choose to take artifacts either for personal gain, or in the interest of spreading knowledge about the island. Alternatively, players who feel that the island should be able to keep its secrets, or feel that Archie has immoral intentions, may choose to leave the artifacts in the sand.
By providing a space for children to make choices based on their own beliefs about right and wrong, CryptoCoordinates allows them to personalize the narrative of the island and contribute their own perspective. It’s important to note that the space does not instruct students about “what is right,” but allows children to grapple with these moral questions on their own, determining what they individually feel is right or wrong. When a variety of characters and rules are presented (as in Crypto), there is no obvious right or wrong choice.
Rather than providing answers, games can offer narrative tensions and difficult questions so that individuals propel themselves forward by advancing a moral argument. Adding a moral tension into a narrative creates a path to the player’s own beliefs and intentionality. The player must exercise their intentions in order to progress within the game.
In games and in classrooms, asking questions in which there is no right answer opens up spaces for conversations that are often lost when the focus is simply on questions with a predetermined answer. We have seen that students exhibit a variety of beliefs and support their beliefs in many different ways, many unimagined by the designers. They often either elaborate on game elements (“What if there’s a curse? You might get your head chopped off!”) or real world elements (“What if it’s illegal?” or “I like my secrets to be left alone.”). They may instantly personalize the experience by judging an action or concept as right or wrong, and are empowered because their opinion cannot be deemed right or wrong. As a consequence, asking more difficult questions (questions without answers), in games or otherwise, may prove more motivating and engaging than questions without the same tensions and with existing answers.
