The great RCHK Skribbl-off: a picture perfect online house event

By Milo O’Neill

The beginning of March saw the introduction of RCHK’s first Skribbl.io house competition, which took place on Zoom during the weeks of the 1st and 8th of March. Competitors represented their advisories and houses in online games, with the winners earning house points for their respective houses. The best players from each year level also competed in a finals competition, in which Year 12 student Eugenia Tong was victorious.

“I found it really fun and a good break away from the stresses of our modified learning (even as Year 12s were in everyday),” says Tong. “It was also pretty great to see how abstract one could see things and sometimes when I couldn’t get the word the connections other people were able to make in their brains were amazing.” 

The online software that was used to facilitate the competition, Skribbl.io, is described as a ‘free multiplayer drawing and guessing game’, in which one player draws an object while the people on the server try and guess what the player is drawing - almost like an online version of the popular board game Pictionary. The game also encourages creativity and thinking skills, making it a perfect software to use for a house event, especially when we were confined to online learning.

“I thought it would be a cool idea as a house event because it's ideal for doing online,” says Santiago Lau Vazquez, a year 9 junior house captain and co-organiser of the event.

Continuing to encourage house spirit throughout online learning has been a major target for house directors and house captains alike. Since the founding of Renaissance College in 2006, the house system has been an integral part of the RCHK community, with a goal to encourage inclusion and make students feel like they are a part of something important. Now, fifteen years later, the ideology remains the same: although months of online learning have made it harder for events to be organised, a way around the obstacles was found, as is evident with the continued creation of house events - opportunities for students to express themselves and have fun while still trying to win points for their house.

“It was pretty fun, and there wasn't really anything to not enjoy,” says Kendo Longid, year 8 student and representative of advisory Tang 4 in the competition.

However, like everything, the organisation and execution of the event was not without its drawbacks. 

“There were a few problems during the initial rounds, since skribbl is actually blocked by our school, so we all had to use hotspots to play,” says Tong. “In the finals, we used drawasaurus instead, but many of the names for the rooms were rather vulgar, which probably meant that skribbl would’ve been more friendly to use. The atmosphere was pretty nice, but there could have been more interaction because most of us would just stay on mute and concentrate on the game. I believe we were all in school by the finals, so we could have been socially distanced in the same room instead, which may have better fostered an interactive environment.”

“It could have been more RCHK themed (there is a function to add your own words into a skribbl game),” states Longid.

Overall, the skribbl.io house competition was very successful, and it was well received by both younger and older students. It remains to be seen if such a competition will take place in the future, but the house directors will have enjoyed the strong reception to the event.

“Obviously, I am rather honoured [to have won the competition],” Tong adds. “The best moment from the game was probably getting “scythe” very quickly, but I do believe I have a slight advantage in vocabulary over those in the lowest secondary year levels as an older student, though it did not make a big difference due to the nature of the game. It was a really close game because there wasn’t a single person who didn’t miss at least one word, so it really came down to who usually got it early!”