Beginnings at Calare PS

Hi I am Julie and I teach a Year 6 class at Calare Public School. The class is full of 32 students ready for High School.

I decided to take the project on with Rob, our computer wiz. I thought it would be an activity that would help keep them focused in their final term of primary school.

After talking to the students in my class, there was a lot of excitement with the prospect of creating their own game.

For the past few weeks we have been running though the learning phase of Kahootz. We dedicate 2 hours a week to Kahootz. Rob has been leading the lessons and I have been the extra set of hands in the lab. Team teaching allows us to get to each student group in the class.

During these first few weeks we have encountered some difficulties when saving. Students were losing their work – disappearing into server space. With a more time consuming method, we have been able now to save the students work, in their own directory, so they don’t have to use the same computer each time.

Each student keeps a Kahootz journal where they can record their thoughts, their initial ideas and any information that they need to remember, for example, where to find a particular scene or object they like.

We are now getting reading for the planning phase and the “Good Game Design” VC with Anthony.

Hi, I’m Rob, our school’s computer coordinator. It’s a joy to be involved in the Game Design Project. What a fantastic opportunity!
Julie and I are really looking forward to the next phase of the project (not to mention the students!)
Our team teaching approach is working well and after overcoming some technical hitches, the students are almost ready to attack the game design task. Bring it on!

First Post :)

Hi Everyone,

My name is Sally and I teach a very mixed ability 5/6 at Greenwich Public School. We recently spent the better part of a day at MacICT "cramming" the first few hours of the project into one day (due to time and technology restraints). The day went really well and the kids were all extremely engaged and were all super keen to get started. However, that was last term and I'm sure they have forgotten most of it, but once we get back into it I'm hoping it will all come rushing back (time will tell!).

I was impressed how most of the kids who picked things up really fast were willing to help their friends and teach each other, that made my job 1000 times easier!

Starting our game design project at West Pymble

Hi everyone, my name is Lisa Gielis and I am a Year 5/6 teacher at West Pymble Public school. My class is full of very bright students who are always up for a challenge so I figured I would sign us up for this project! We are studying The Hobbit at the moment and I also felt that was a great tie-in for a role playing game and another great way to explore narratives.

The class is just about to start storyboarding and designing their games after spending the past 7 weeks or so exploring Kahootz. Some students are fairly tentative, many are happily animating and keypointing away and a few are really roaring ahead - one student has already designed a game and it works quite well! Everyone is enjoying Kahootz and a session in the lab is always loud and engaging. Many students are working at a level that exceeds my own but I encourage them to team up and work things through and usually they come up with a solution (excellent higher order thinking here!). Although, Anthony, I am encouraging them to keep a list of questions for you for our first VC!

I'm looking forward to seeing how the students go with the pen and paper work and I'm not really sure whether to make them fully complete this section before they can create in Kahootz or whether to work a scene or section at a time?

Anyway, it's all systems go at West Pymble and we are really enjoying the project so far.

Game Design Project

I am a Year 4 teacher at Allambie Heights PS and have just started using Kahootz this year. One afternoon a week I work with a Year 4 and 5 Enrichment Group as part of our Gifted and Talented program. The students have been participating in different projects with me this year, but Kahootz is definitely their favourite.
Kahootz is brand new to our school so it has been a learning experience for everyone. While I think I am up to date with technology I have discovered there is so much more to learn.
The group has finished the training stage of Kahootz and have proved to be very fast learners. Initially the children were blown away by the software and what they could do. Most of the children are very confident in using computers and love exploring the new software.
The theme for our game design project is based on an environmental theme. This links to a previous project, Murder Under the Microscope. The children are currently working on their storyboards, but can't wait to get back on the computers to actually start creating their games.

Along for the Ride

I have just got back from attending the Australian Council of Educational Leaders Conference where I was presented with the Microsoft NSW Innovative Teachers Award for 2010. I received this award for work I have done in the area of game design both with my own class at Cromer Public School, and with my MacICT project, Engaging Students as Game Designers, including the new work we are doing with Kodu.

I met with the other State winners, a group of amazing innovative teachers, who are all doing incredible projects in their classrooms and across their regions. What a privilege it was to spend time with such a diverse group of teachers and, after bonding very quickly, we are all looking forward to getting together next March.

Next March I will be off to Phuket, Thailand to participate in the Regional Microsoft Innovative Teachers Awards. I will be presented with many new experiences including working in cross cultural teams on different challenges. What an opportunity and what a journey I've been on. I'm definitely along for the ride and who knows where it will take me!

The huge screen at the Awards ceremony.

This award reflects the combined efforts of the amazing team I work with, particularly my immediate team, Anthony and Simon, and also all my colleagues at MacICT where we have the opportunity to collaborate around ideas, share intelligent conversations, debate and spark off one another. All the projects developed at MacICT are what they are because of the leadership of the Director (and my mentor) Debbie Evans whose leadership at the Centre promotes the process of innovation and creates incentives through giving project teams autonomy, the freedom to strive for mastery and a purpose for what we are doing. While perfection may not be attainable, the culture at MacICT is to chase perfection through repeated iterations of our projects and in chasing perfection, hopefully, we can catch excellence! (Vince Lombardi, American Football Coach)

In addition to this award, two students in my Year 6 class won first and second place in Australia in Kodu Kup, a game design skill competition aimed to recognise students who demonstrate excellence in a diverse range of technical, creative and game play depth and design in the use of Kodu Games Lab. What a fantastic achievement by these two students. I am one very proud teacher!

Playing to Learn

This is a fabulous Prezi by Maria Anderson. It is well worth taking the time to view it.

Playing to Learn? on Prezi

Let's Make a Game - Part 5: Talking Without Words

Welcome back!

Last episode we dealt very briefly with a fascinating element of Game Design called Player Feedback. I just wanted to delve quickly back into it and maybe flesh out a couple of points before we get into the next topic. So, what is Player Feedback? Player Feedback is incredibly important to any good game, it's how your game speaks to you, how it tells you things, how you know what you're trying to achieve.

Good games are difficult to play. It's at the core of any gaming experience, it's the reward for playing. Things have to be difficult so that when you beat the game you really feel like you've achieved something.

Or you could just pull the stickers off.

But here is the important distinction: a good game has to be difficult, not impossible! There has to be someway for you to stumble your way into the right course of action and make it feel like you (as the player) knew what you were doing the entire time.

I'm free! I mean, I knew where I was the whole time!

How do you tell your player to go this direction rather than that one? How do you make them learn that the red apples are healthy but the green ones are poisonous?

This is where Game Designers use Player Feedback. Computer games are (obviously) highly visual. Think of them like a TV show or a movie. When you're watching a movie, you don't need words to know that that's the evil guy when he comes on screen. No one needs to hold up a huge sign that says "Look! The hero is now being brave!"

Movies prefer to use music and action on the screen to explain what's going on. Words tend to just get in the way. It's more exciting and the audience isn't getting sidetracked with huge blocks of text.

Oh wow! They're just about to start the gun-fight!

Last episode we used the way the forest looked and sounded to suggest that it was scary, and we designed the castle in such a way that it seemed daunting but exciting nonetheless. The players don't need to read anything - they just know that the forest is scary, or that the castle is exciting, just like it would be in a movie. Both levels make it very clear that the player doesn't want to stay there. The player almost instinctively knows that they have to get out, that to win the level means leaving.

And that's Player Feedback, simply: explaining a game without words. It can be very difficult, but it's always important to try to reduce the amount of pure text in your game. We've rushed through a lot today, well done! Don't worry if you're still a little confused, the Teacher- and Student-Handouts go into a lot more detail about Player Feedback, and suggest a few ways you can implement it into your game.

So we'll leave it here for now. Next week we'll be wrapping up our Let's Make a Game series with the fun part: Testing!

Stay tuned!

Anthony