The project packs are collections of resources that help students make fun, simple games based on your lessons. Some key features are:
Through group discussion and individual reflection, students will explore the class content in order to apply its themes to a simple, novel game.
Creative teachers and students can use the project in many subjects, but they work best as creative projects forsocial studiesand language arts.
The games are non-digital, so you won't lose class time while students learn to program a computer.
All resources are created in Google Apps, so it's easy to assign and students can collaborate on the games.
The project is very flexible. Teachers can focus on the game design process as much or as little as they want.
Right now I have two project packs, both of which appeared on this blog in two series of posts. I plan to add at least two other packs by the end of the month.
Another part of the site I'm excited about is this page designed for students. It offers several resources for those who want to dig deeper into game design.
This final stage of the project can be the most important, as it requires students to reflect upon what they learned about the lesson topic for your course as well as game design. In it each student Students will complete the document at the link below.
Do not give students the document until they worked through Parts 1, 2 and 3 of the activity. That means they should have created a game based on the Love Letter game, tested it and played at least one game created by another group before they try to answer the questions.
If you modified the activity in Parts 1 - 3 of the project, you might have to change the questions in the document to fit what your students experienced. Also, change the references to "the course topic" so they ask about the specific topic students studied in your class.
Through reflection, students should gain deeper insights from the activity. Their responses also provide you with a look at what they've learned about the lesson topic. That can be used to guide followup instruction or class discussion.
The reflection questions in the document come in three parts:
The activity itself
The game design process
The lesson topic and how they connected elements of it to their game theme
This is the third part in a game design exploration based on the game Love Letter*. The activity would work well in any language arts or social studies class.
In this stage, students will test the games. They might play their own game or just play each other's games. You could even incorporate revisions and further playtesting. It all depends on how much time you want them to spend on this. Details follow below.
If a class is working through this design activity, at this point each group of students should have redesigned the Love Letter game to fit the lesson content. At the very least they should have done the following. (All of this is explained in the second post in this series.)
Chosen a theme for their game based on the topic studied in class
Created a title for their game
Written a short introduction about the game
Redesigned the cards and changed them on the template found in Part 2 of this series.
Optionally, the groups might have designed additional rules and components for their game.
Making the Cards
In the previous stage of this activity, students revised a template to create new cards based on the Love Letter game. Before they can test the games, they'll need to produce some cards they can actually play with. One way to do that is to print on card stock, but I've found it's easy to see through most card stock I've used over the years.
Whether it's a first draft or a late stage prototype, here's the method I've been using lately.
Put an old playing card or some other game card in them that you won't need. This keeps them stiff enough to shuffle.
Print your cards on paper and cut the cards out. (Or for first drafts, you might just write them by hand on slips of paper.)
Slide those paper "cards" into the sleeves.
Here's a short video that I created for students that shows how I use this process with early and late stage prototypes.
If the groups added rules for additional cards or components, all of those pieces need to be printed and cut out or gathered as well.
Depending on how much time you want the class to devote to this playtesting experience, groups could make two or more copies of their game so multiple groups could play them at once.
The importance of playtesting and revision - the iterative process in game design
This testing and revision stage of the game design process is essential. It can be fun and rewarding or sometimes very frustrating! It's often the heart of the creation process and it will probably take more time than all other parts combined.
Being so important, students need to see it. With limited class time, though, it is likely you will use it in this activity only provide some exposure to the concepts and a chance to have fun with the designs. Tell students it is important when making any type of game, but remind them to really test and improve their game they'd need to work on it a lot outside of class.
Keeping that in mind, tweak the following outline and resources to fit your needs.
Groups test their own games
Game designers often play their own games first, just to see if the creations even work at all. At this stage, each group should play their game at least once.
After playing, students should discuss these questions:
Did the game work as we intended?
Did we find anything (good or bad) that we didn't expect?
How much do we think other groups will enjoy our game?
What changes could we make to improve the game?
Depending on how much time you have for this design exploration, students could rework their cards. Simple changes might be handwritten right on the cards. Significant changes might require students to actually alter the cards in the original Google Drawings they made in Part 2 of this activity.Of course, that would require them to print and cut out more components.
If time doesn't allow a students to make all the changes they want to, remind them that they can improve the game as much as they want on their own.
Groups test a game designed by another group
For this part of the activity, each group will play at least one other group's game. Ideally this will be "blind playtesting", meaning the groups will play the games without additional assistance from the game designers.
The game components should already be created by now. Game introductions and possibly new rules need to be printed (or shared through Google Drive) so groups have everything they need to learn and play the games.
Along with these materials, give each group a copy of this Game Playtesting Sheet. It provides questions for before and after playing the game.
Additional considerations
Give the groups time in class to read and discuss the Game Playtesting Sheets that test groups filled out for their game.
Groups could test games from more than one group if possible.
Students could take their games home and have other people play them to get more opinions.
Have a class discussion (possibly virtually) at the end of this stage so you and the students can look for patterns on what worked best in the games.
It would be ideal to get test groups from a class that did not go through the design process themselves. In other words, they would likely be unfamiliar with Love Letter, so the whole experience would be new to them. This requires the designers to put a lot more work into their written rules.
*Love Letter was designed by Seiji Kanai and published by Alderac Entertainment Group. I have permission from the publisher to use their game as I have in this exploration. Please consider supporting them by buying a copy of the game that your students can play as they learn the basic rules.
This is the second part of my game design exploration based on the game Love Letter*. Be sure you and your students are familiar with Part 1 before you work through the activity below.
In this second step, students will add a new theme to the simple, fun game Love Letter. The theme will be based on a topic you are studying in class. This will work best in a language arts or social studies class, but you could definitely use it in other classes too.
In applying the theme, students will discuss people, events and other elements of your course content.
What Is Theme in a Game?
Theme is what the game is about. Not all games have a strong theme, but many popular ones do. The theme of Risk is world conquest. The theme of Monopoly is making money in real estate.
If you're familiar with the original Love Letter, that theme was to deliver a love letter to the Princess.
Love Letter has been such a popular game across the world that it already has some new themes and other variations based on it. Here are a few you could show students in class. You can click on some of the images on the pages below to see the similarities and differences between versions:
Lost Legacy - There are actually many Lost Legacy games, all of which use and extend the simple rules of Love Letter.
Adding a New Theme to Love Letter
After discussing themes in games and looking at the different versions of Love Letter, it's time for students to add a new theme to the game. The theme will be based on the lesson topic they've studied in class.
The special Game Design Planning Sheet linked below will guide them through the process. Here are some things to keep in mind before assigning the planning sheet:
The students will choose a theme that's related to your topic. The lesson might be about a book they just read, like The Odyssey, or maybe it will be about a historical event like The War of 1812. While they could use those entire topics as the theme, they also could choose a specific part of those topics. For example, they might focus on a climatic scene of the book or a particularly interesting battle of the war.
The planning sheet will require them to name each card as something from their theme and to rename the tokens. Though not necessarily required, the sheet also suggests they make other changes to the effects and rules.
The document has a link to the components for a very basic template of Love Letter cards. If students click it, they will get a copy of it as a Google Slides file. They can type their changes onto the cards (and they will print them in a later stage of the game).
There are optional ideas listed on the second page of the planning sheet for students who want to explore game design further. Use them as appropriate for the age of your students and the needs of this project.
In the next stage, we will look at how to make a playable copy of the new version of Love Letter. We'll also present some options for testing the games in class.
*Love Letter was designed by Seiji Kanai and published by Alderac Entertainment Group. I have permission from the publisher to use their game as I have in this exploration. Please consider supporting them by buying a copy of the game that your students can play as they learn the basic rules.
Several months ago I created a game design exploration that required students to redesign a simple game so it fit a topic they were studying. I'm now working on several Game Design Project Packs that include games of different types.
While most of these Project Packs will use simple games I created myself, this second installment uses a very popular new game called Love Letter. I do have permission from the publisher (Alderac Entertainment Group) to use the game this way.
For this first part of the game design exploration, students would learn how to play Love Letter and they'd play a few rounds.
The General Idea of the Project
You will want to know the overall flow of the activity. You can see my previous exploration as an example, or this short outline should suffice.
Students study some topic in class. It could be anything really, but these activities lend themselves to people and events. Language arts and social studies classes are a good fit. Some of this part can happen concurrently with the following stages.
Students learn and play a simple game.
Using a planning sheet, they will apply a theme and possibly some new rules to that game so it fits the topic they're studying.
Depending on how much time you want them to spend on this project, you can follow up with some playtesting and further development.
A reflection sheet allows students to think deeply about the course topic and game design in general.
Further resources are available for students who want to dig deeper and possibly print a quality copy of their game.
Getting a Copy of the Game
Like all the games in these projects, Love Letter uses few components and it can be played in about 15 - 30 minutes. In fact, the entire game has only 16 cards in it! (It's in a genre of modern games known as micro-games.)
I strongly encourage teachers to buy a copy of the game for students to play. The original Love Letter has spawned several different variations including a Batman and a Hobbit version. All are essentially the same and any would work for this project. Here's one link to the original version for less than $10. (Just don't mistakenly get one of the more expensive, harder to find early editions of the game.)
I do have a template (linked below) to the basic cards. Students will use that template in Part 2 of this exploration, but it would be possible to play the game by printing that template on card stock.
How to Play
Here is a video I created (with some help from my wife for narration) that shows how to play the game. You could show this in class or just watch it yourself and explain the game to the students. All the rules take less than two minutes to explain.
I recommend for this activity that the students only play the game enough to get the general idea. They don't have to play a full game, as described in the video. A few rounds should be sufficient.
As I mentioned above, I did make this template so students can modify the game in the second part of this activity. If you want to use this to make a very plain (and boring!) version of the game to use in class, you could print it on card stock and cut out the cards. (More information will be given later for ways students can make prototypes of their game without using card stock.)
Next...
See the second part of the activity here. In it, students explore underlying concepts and elements of your lesson topic by adding a new theme to Love Letter.
2015 was an exciting year for helping teachers beyond my local district! In this post I will list some of the top tips, activities and resources from this blog over the past 12 months.
Now on to the great resources that got the most attention this year… I ran a few PD sessions in the summer and these popular tips and tipsheets were a result:
New Game Design Resources Any teacher knows students today love games and many of them want to make games. I posted two popular series about creating games design this year. These are both non-digital game activities.
This first one is a “make a game in an hour” activity that I’ve done with designers. I started with a big picture look at what I and others have learned from making games.
Game Design in the Classroom - What I learned, what others learned, the "game jam" style activity and thoughts on developing and publishing
Later in the year I created this series, which one designer called a “baby step” into game design. All the resources are created in Google Docs for easy modification and sharing with students. It’s a flexible introduction to making games that integrates with many subjects. The flow of the project is...
Update 3/7/2014: I just updated the app and I was very happy to see they added a "Jump" option to the Sound Board activity! This allows you to make a region of the screen a sound AND a link to a new page. Story lines can now branch, making for "choose your own adventure" style, interactive fiction. This was the feature I was waiting for, so multiply the positive of this original post by at least five!
Tiny Tap is a free app for iPad that allows the user to create very simple games. I installed it at least a year ago and used it with a few young children, including first graders. Recently I discovered newer features that could make it excellent for digital storytelling or maybe even flipped teaching or blended learning.
The primary activity in the games is to tap the correct part of the picture. You can record an audio prompt, such as, "Tap Grandma's picture." When the user taps Grandma a success sound is played and a balloon rises on the screen. I have found students enjoy playing the simple activities. As soon as I show them how to make them, they immediately want to make their own questions by choosing the "answer area" on their pictures.
At some point the app was updated and I noticed it had a few more bells and whistles. One time when I tried to show someone how to use it, I ran into trouble with getting the imported picture to "stick". I didn't have time to figure it out and I didn't come back to it for many months.
But this week at the family Thanksgiving dinner I decided I'd show it to my nephew. He is in kindergarten now, so I was curious if the app would be simple enough for him to make a game. (I knew he'd be able to play one I made, but I was hoping to encourage some creativity rather than just another gaming experience.)
I learned that with a little assistance he picked it up quickly. I also discovered they added two other types of activities. Now instead of every page being a guessing game, there is also:
Sound Board - A picture is displayed and you can enclose areas that are "buttons". For each one, you can record narration or a sound.
Say Something - This allows you to add narration to a page.
By using Say Something, the app becomes a very nice tool for telling a story involving pictures and narration.
It is easy to import the pictures. (I learned that to stick the picture in place after importing it from the camera or Camera Roll you have to double tap it and choose "Stick".) Once imported, they can be resized and arranged. There are a few simple art tools to write or draw on the page.
Next, you can add one of the activities. Once I showed my nephew how to add a question he was excited. He made a few pages with ease. There are a few steps, so I had to remind him where to click the first few times.
I love the potential for a narrated story that has guessing activities or a Sound Board in it. Imagine a story about a toy coming to life and hiding. The question pages would provide fun for the child to identify the hiding place, possibly based on carefully listening to the previous pages. The Sound Board pages offer a lot of room for creative uses, such as an exploration to gain clues by tapping different areas or just a "play area" where objects might make fun sounds.
Besides making simple lessons (flipped teaching or blended learning for lower elementary?) I imagine teachers could use this to teach procedures in the room at the start of a school year. Pictures and narration would explain things first, then question pages could quiz them.
If you make an account you can share the activities. This should allow you to load a creation on multiple devices. They also can be shared on Facebook too, so it could make a great end product parents and family could see from home. (Sharing requires the user to "tap and hold", so it's unlikely a young user is going to share or access something without an adult's assistance.)
If you make any fun creations like these using Tiny Tap, I'd be glad to hear it! Please share as a comment or by email.
I try to focus a lot on passion in this blog. On the job I want to motivate students by appealing to their passions.
I find this to be most difficult when working with teen boys. While there are certainly some tough cases, my difficulty is rarely due to my inability to identify their passions. It's usually the challenge of bridging the gap between their interests and the required curriculum.
I know many these male students are very passionate about video games. When I ask them what they want to study in our digital media courses, they often tell me they want to learn to make games. (It is not limited to just the boys, but it is always the boys more than girls.)
It seems like game design could be an ideal motivator. On top of that, it's my hobby too. But somehow I have yet to find a good way to make video game creation accessible to all students in a way that meets all requirements of the courses in which I am working. I've been exploring the options more this summer and I will post a few brief conclusions I've formed about some tools at our disposal.
Lesson plans and course flow are in the works too, but for now I'll start with the programming tools.
MIT App Inventor
I am starting with this one because it is 100% free.
My Experience
I used App Inventor for my own studies in a graduate course last year. I have not tried to use it with students yet.
I was able to make a playable game quite easily with this program, but it did not look great. I made no effort to explore the graphic capabilities. Also, my game was not an action "video game" in the usual sense. It was a fairly simple two-player game that involved selecting options.
Here's a video demonstrating the game. I show it on the Android simulator in the video, but I did play the game on a phone as well. (I have to love that one comment a user posted for it! As a former math teacher, I'm used to less than pleasant sentiments expressed by the unimpressed.)
It is quite simple to get started with App Inventor. I have years of programming experience, so that probably helped. The list of options are small, intuitive and well documented, though, so I found it to be the easiest application to take the game from concept to playing it on a device.
Unlike most programs that allow you to create for mobile devices, it's free. Being able to play their games on their phones should appeal to many students.
It only works on Android devices. You can test it on a simulator if you don't have a phone, but there's no option to post playable versions online.
Testing was a little slow with the Android simulator. The debugging process could get frustrating with small fixes and significant wait times to see what worked and what didn't.
Files were quite large. Even my simple games had relatively large files and when I tested them on my phone last year things were sluggish sometimes.
For all the good I see in this program, I am not focusing on it as a possibility this year in school, mostly for the reasons listed as negatives above. If you have more experience with App Inventor I will be glad to hear additional thoughts on this.
Update 2/2/2014: I recently posted a review of a book that will be great resource for learning Stencyl: Learning Stencyl 3.x Game Development. If you are considering using Stencyl in class or if you are just learning the program, I recommend the book.
Last year I tried to use Stencyl to program some Flash games for a graduate project. It promised to be a flexible tool for making many types of games and several examples were offered that proved even teenagers could use it. Like Scratch, App Inventor and GameMaker, it simplified the task of coding by using blocks that snap in place.
Unfortunately I was so confused by the application that I gave up. I had some success with App Inventor prior to this, but Stencyl made no sense...until I came back to it this summer.
In version 2.0 they introduced Events as an element of programming. Previously everything was done as Behaviors and I couldn't make those work. This summer I gave it another try and the Events made sense to me. I'm sure I'm programming very inefficiently at times, since I completely ignore Behaviors (which I guess are reusable sets of Events), but I am able to make games. I'm happy.
I got lost for many enjoyable hours this summer while creating this Flash version of What's It to Ya?. I felt like a kid exploring my old Commodore VIC20 thirty years ago.
But my own interests aside, the big question I need to answer is whether or not I would use this in the classroom. I will be working with some digital media courses at the high school and middle school levels this year. I know many of the students will want to make games. Is Stencyl going to make that possible?
The short answer for me is not yet. I simply have not figured out how to introduce students to complex programming tools like this. In the past, when I taught very simple computer programming, I would provide some projects to get them started. In this case, though, much of the learning would have to be done on their own. After a few weeks of exploring they will be beyond my own skill level. Knowing the students that we generally get in these classes, their desire to make video games will far exceed their logical reasoning and patience for learning about, building and debugging programs. I hope I'm wrong, but my guess is that many will not be disciplined enough to proceed on their own.
(As an example of complexity, the What's It to Ya? game I programmed was very simple in the fact that it had just a few Scenes and movable objects. I didn't have to concern myself with things colliding or animated characters. Still, figuring out how to calculate the scores for a round really taxed my brain. I admit I'm out of practice on programming in general, but even once I figured out how I'd do it with other languages I had a very hard time putting it into Stencyl. After a few frustrating hours I had to admit that I only know of two or three students I have taught in 18 years who would have worked that hard to learn something new.)
If a few students are capable and moving ahead in the class I would start with Gamestar Mechanic at the middle school level instead of Stencyl.
At the high school level...I'm still undecided. Scratch seems like a good starting point for actual programming, but most examples I have seen make it look like it's aimed at a younger audience. I need more experience with GameMaker to be able to help them or to decide if it clearly is easier to learn than Stencyl is.
A quick search for Stencyl in the classroom has turned up a few leads about how other teachers are putting it to use. I also just came across CodeHS this morning, which calls for all students to learn programming. Obviously teachers are accomplishing good things with tools like these, so I have some research to do. I want to offer students the possibility of making games, but at this time I am far from being ready to offer this to all students in my computer classes.
I am finally calling this flash version of What's It To Ya? a finished project. I learned a lot and I'll write some reflections that might be of interest to teachers soon. I will also write up a lesson plan to use the game in the classroom as a writing prompt.
I'm not a professional and I know there are lots of little things I could do to improve this. It's probably as good as I care to get it (functional as a classroom activity). If you find a bug or have a suggestion to improve it, though, feel free to contact me at mpetty39@gmail.com.
In this part of the presentation I focus on some vital tips that I learned about the playtest process. This is certainly the most important and possibly the most enjoyable part of making a game. I playtested most of my best games with students over the years and the fun of those sessions and the lasting friendships that developed outweigh any success I have achieved as a game designer. That might be the best lesson to share with students if you are creating games for or with your classes.
After years of working with some talented and successful game designers, I have pulled out just a few practical bits of advice that can be very insightful for testing any game.
I love the Educreations app, which was used to record this presentation. However, I have found it's not ideal when I like 85% of what I said, then I mess up or can't remember a detail! Consequently, here are some clarifications:
Blind playtesting - I made it sound like the playtesters at this stage have to find the game components! I was picturing them finding them in the box like one would after purchasing a game, but it could be misleading. Basically, this is your late stage testing and you want to provide the testers with a close copy of what they will have if they purchased a published version of your game.
That golden question about what keeps players playing comes from work I did with Kes Sampanthar when we edited the Protospiel playtest sheet. I am in his debt for that insight.
And it slipped my mind at the moment, but it was an interview with Andrew Parks where I pulled out the idea of changing just one thing at a time in later stages of playtesting. Take that for what it's worth. I usually can't so limit myself!
And to elaborate on Protospiel:
The Protospiel website is here. Check out that site, but also do some searches for it to see how the group has grown and how many published games have been created by attendees over the years. The original idea came from Stephen Glenn and his friend Dominic Crapuchettes organized the first gathering. It would be a shame to talk about Protospiel without giving them credit for their early efforts.
The old Protospiel site has some useful resources that didn't get moved over to the new one yet. You might want to browse those here as well.
And last of all, I have to point out that playtesting at school has one important drawback. Almost any game seems more fun to students when they are at school! This is especially true if you try a game during class. I usually did playtesting at lunch or after school, but even then games seem more fun than the usual business of that environment. Keep that in mind when you think about dropping several thousand dollars on publishing your creation. Games need to attract attention when in the vast array of competing products, not just when compared to your lecture on supply and demand.
Here's my first attempt at a presentation about making games. I talk very generally about how I get ideas and how I begin to develop them. If there is interest in this, I will follow it up with information on playtesting and publishing the games.
This post also serves as an example of the Educreations app for the iPad. I love the app, but it can be frustrating when you want to start over on the recording. I am happy to find out that I can embed the lesson here. Originally I thought they were only accessible by users registered with your school on the Educreations site.
I have written plenty about the Game Design and Ecosystems project, but I wanted to have one post that links to everything and sums up the experience.
Andrea Thelen and I agreed that we accomplished a lot with this project. It was the first time either of us had attempted such a degree of integration. While I had worked with Gamestar Mechanic before this, I had never taken an entire class through the design process to a multi-level game. We were happy with the results, but we felt it took a little longer than we'd hoped to complete it. Also, the standard of the students' work at the end was not as high or as consistent as we would have liked. The story we hoped they'd develop was not strong, for example, and some students didn't complete all aspects of the project.
I asked Andrea to make a list of things she'd do differently next time and I added a few items of my own. Here's what we came up with.
Assign groups rather than have students choose their own groups
Limit group size to two students if at all possible
Provide feedback on each stage of the project more quickly, especially on the story elements and the extra components such as the quiz and the playtest assignment
Start the Quest at Gamestar Mechanic right at the beginning and be sure the students are progressing in a timely manner
Provide more examples of good and bad aspects of game design
One goal of the project was to have younger students play the games and take quizzes to see how well they learned the ecosystem facts from the games. This did not come together as well as I had hoped. The younger students' teachers discovered they didn't have enough time to devote to the game and the quizzes. One classroom did play the games and the students enjoyed them a lot, but only a very few students took the quizzes. There wasn't enough interesting data collected from those for me to report.
In summary, here are the parts of the project that I wrote about previously. Resources related to each stage are included in the posts:
Donations are definitely accepted!
Our ecosystem project has been a popular stop for many educators searching for project ideas. If you find anything here useful, please consider donating $1 to $3. Any money I receive this way will be used in my district to purchase resources for similar technology projects. We and our students greatly appreciate your support! We would love to hear how you use the resources too.
Here are two games that came out of this project. There were other games worth mentioning, but I am using these two because the groups did the best job of finishing all parts of the project, including the quizzes. The plan was to give the games and quizzes to some younger students to see if they would learn the content just by playing the games. We are still waiting on that feedback, but for now, here are the games and quizzes.
My prior experience has been that students resist planning the games and that's what Mr. Hodgson stated in the lesson as well. I was pleasantly surprised to see the girls in this class enjoying the storyboarding process. As I reported previously, there were no complaints!
To start the lesson, I showed them the examples from lesson above and I gave them one example I made based specifically on the ecosystem games. I posted these directions and had them get to work:
For each level in your game, make a storyboard. Each one must include:
First off, thanks go to Katya Hott for posting a link to my project on the Gamestar Mechanic Teacher Blog! I am glad for the exposure and I hope some of our ideas are useful to the many teachers who will see we are doing in this all girls science class.
After reading that blog post I was reminded of some important things:
I said I would give an update this week on our storyboard assignment. Unfortunately (sort of!) our school was closed today because of snow. It's the first time this winter, so it is a welcome surprise to have a day off...or at least a day where I'm not working at the school. The problem is I only saved the storyboard lesson and pictures on the school network. I will have to post those materials next week.
The girls started working on their games this week. There has been a lot of excitement at this stage of the project. I was amazed at how well they worked together and were engaged in the process. It is clear that working through the Quest on the Gamestar Mechanic site does a good job of teaching them how to use the application. It was great to see so many of them begin making and playing their first games with such enthusiasm.
Here is a copy of the Game Creation Checklist that I handed out. The girls are creating their games by referring to that checklist, their storyboards and their completed Game Flow Charts.
Most of the students are creating their games with the basic resources they earned through the Quest, but a few are working on additional Challenges so they can get certain sprites. I did require them to do the Impact Challenge because I wanted them to have the sign sprite so they can write science facts in their games.
Most importantly, I realized when I read Katya's post that I haven't mentioned my partner in this venture by name. Andrea Thelen is the middle school science teacher that helped create this project. I asked if I could do something with game design. She suggested the ecosystem tie-in and provided all the background information I needed to develop the project. This is the first long term project I have worked with in the science department in my district, so I have learned a lot from Andrea and I greatly appreciate her willingness to try something new.
We're into our third week and several groups have started their games. That means I'm very behind on posting the steps we've gone through and the documents that I used. I won't catch up entirely with this post, but here are a few more stages.
First, before or after each of the assignments below we encouraged the students to continue their progress through the Quest at Gamestar Mechanic. It has taken them a very long time to work through the five episodes necessary for them to publish games, but the girls are not complaining. Honestly, I don't think I have heard a single student complain about having to play the levels. And it appears the lessons intertwined in the game levels have been effective too. Still, I wish the Quest was a little shorter. Some groups have spent a total of three hours or more on working through the levels.
Students had a tough time filling out the Game Flow Chart (mentioned in the last post) properly, so we had to work with them to be sure they correctly planned the game and had some science facts. Here's a completed sample flow chart that I used to better explain this assignment.
Next, we required them to write an engaging introduction to their game. The assignment resource is here. I plan to send their introductions to the younger students who will be playing the games so that they can vote on the ones that sound most exciting. This is keeping with my initial project focus of effectively presenting information.
These assignments led up to storyboarding, which I will explain that stage in my next post. At this time, though, I want to mention a few other assignments that we worked on.
One of my goals, which I eventually set aside, was to have them compare and contrast the game design process (one good version of which I found explained on this page) with the Scientific Method. The main reason for this was so that the science was not lost in the fun. I liked how dreaming up a fun game is kind of like forming a hypothesis and how testing that game is like running an experiment to test a hypothesis.
I ran this by the teacher and she agreed it was a decent idea. In practice, though, it was just distracting. We started down that path by making a Glog assignment on the Scientific Method. Given the amount of time some girls are spending on the Quest, we decided to abandon that line of thinking for now.
And I also gave them a couple more journals to help them connect with concepts that they are learning in class.
Journal 2 - Some thoughts about the science and what the students consider to be most important
Journal 3 - Questions about games of all types and which part they would like to play in the game design process
The new semester finds me working with a seventh grade science teacher. We're planning a unit that combines Gamestar Mechanic with the study of ecosystems. We're just starting out, so this post isn't about us. Instead, I wanted to point out the great work Kevin Hodgson did last semester. He put it up on his Video Game Design blog.
His videos, sample worksheets and explanations of what worked and what didn't were inspiring. I strongly recommend going through the materials on each section. His sample game is very well done too. I am always impressed with teachers who do a great project and manage to document it so well for the rest of us.
Going with my previous post about traditional games in the classroom, here's a resource that I recommend to teachers. It is a print on demand service that specializes in board and card games. Students could use this to turn a class project into a nice edition. Copies could be ordered for family and friends. With just a little more work, they can be made available through the site to the world at large.
The Game Crafter offers options for different sized cards, game boards and several other tokens that work for most games. I have published two of my own projects with them and I'm very happy with the results. The game pictured here consists of three different decks of cards and the accessories shown. It cost me about $20 to order my own copy. It's a little more than what I'd pay for a mass produced game with the same components, but it sure beats having to pay for a minimum run of 1,000 copies. My family worked on the project together and they loved seeing it finally arrive in print. I plan to offer it for sale, but to make a profit I will have to raise that price of $20.
So this won't likely be a direct path to a lot of financial rewards, but the site does have a Hall of Fame. There, designers who have used The Game Crafter as a bridge from idea to a successful mass production tell their stories. Certainly this print on demand service can get a good game into the hands of people who can take it further.
I can't say I've used this in the classroom yet, but I suggest it to teachers and I'm looking forward to the first time we can try it. The service is quite easy to use. The only hard part will be working with the graphics and most of that has nothing to do with The Game Crafter. It will depend on polished the students want their cards and boards to look.
I had a little trouble getting everything sized correctly for their site and the interface was a little frustrating at first. Familiarity with a program like GIMP or Paint Shop Pro will do the job nicely.
Once it's all created according to their specs (templates are available on the site) it's just a matter of uploading. You can order your own copies right away, but there are some additional requirements to enter if you want to put it for sale at the site.
If done right, a successful game project like this could involve all of these learning experiences:
Game design, with all of the problem solving, testing and creativity that comes with it
Graphic design
Setting a reasonable cost through choices in the game design itself, component creation and selection of existing components from the site
Writing the rules and informational materials
Promotion of the final product
If it sounds promising, interested students and teachers should start here.
Here are links to two course portfolios I developed over the summer as I finished up my master's program. Both focus on inspiring students through creativity.
Explorations in Game Design and Game Activities in the Classroom - Two activities in this course project focus on ways I used game design in classrooms. One used Gamestar Mechanic in the math class and the other used some variations on my party game design in a Mythology class.
Technology Course for Alternative High School - This was a very ideal project I proposed over last summer. (Why does it only take a week of summer to become extremely idealistic??) The idea was to motivate students by focusing on their passion to create within their areas of interest. As it turned out, plans changed in my own district and I didn't even get to implement the more realistic version of this course yet. Some of the concepts have carried over into other technology projects I refer too in this blog.
