Game Design Exploration - Part 3 - Testing the Games

This is the third part of a series for a classroom game design project that can be used in many classes and subjects. The whole project is based on a very simple game I created. Students will modify that game so it's about the topic they are studying in class.

Here's the flow of the overall project. Each of these stages has its own post, which you can access by clicking the link.

• Learn and play Roll-n-Flip - Students need to learn to play the basic game of Roll-n-Flip first. It should take one class period or less to learn the game and to play it a couple times. 
• Redesign Roll-n-Flip - Next, students will modify the game by adding a theme (based on your lesson) and possibly other rules. This can take more or less than one class period, depending on how much you want them to develop their version of the game.
• Play and improve their game - In this step students test the game their group made and then at least one game created by another group. You could also give them time to improve their game based on feedback. This process can be a class period or more, depending how much you want to focus on game design.
• Reflection - For the last part of the activity, students will reflect on what they learned about your course content and about game design. This reflection "seals the deal" for the learning, making this possibly the most important of step of the project.

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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.

Is everyone ready to proceed?

If a class is working through this design activity, at this point each group of students should have redesigned the simple Roll-n-Flip game. 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 11 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.

Make the games.

When all the parts above are complete, groups should print and cut out any cards or components they need to play their games. It's best to print the cards on cardstock or at least the thickest paper possible.

Each group also needs at least one die. They need tokens for a pawn and chips too, but a template in Part 2 provided components they could cut from paper if those tokens were not available. 

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.

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 even with Roll-n-Flip, so the whole experience would be new to them. This requires the designers to put a lot more work into their rules.

In the next post (and final stage of the activity) students will reflect on their game designs and the design process.

Thanksgiving Magnetic Poetry in Google Drawings

I created this Thanksgiving Magnetic Poetry* in Google Drawings for another teacher. If you click the link, it will ask you to make a copy in your Google Drive.

*If you get a message to request access when you click the link, it is because your Google account won't let you open it. It is shared properly and anyone can open it unless their administrator blocked outside sharing. 

I suggest editing it as you prefer, then assigning it in Google Classroom so all your students get their own copy.

The words are all images except for the five text boxes at the top. It might be cheating to type your own words in magnetic poetry, but teachers can delete those text boxes if they don't want students to use them. I would suggest students limit themselves to five of their own words at most.

You can remove any of the word images that you want too.

If you and your students enjoy this activity, please share a link in the comments of the poems you and they create!

It's inspired by this very popular, well done Halloween Magnetic Poetry activity from the Shake Up Learning blog.

If you like this simple activity, please consider purchasing one of my inexpensive tech activities on Teachers Pay Teachers. It helps me continue to make creative, educational resources.

• Comic Projects with Google Tools Bundle
• Animation and Interactive Stories Using Google Slides

If you like this post, you might also like:

• My Classroom Creativity Game - Make haikus or play other fun games as a class
• Comics with Google Apps - Resources for making comics from photos and more
• Use Google Slides and WeVideo to make narrated slideshows

Updated Comics with Google Tools Resources

Last week I presented at GoogleFest 2015 in Lansing, Michigan. I showed a packed room of teachers how I use Google Drawings and Google Slides to create comics from photos. Now it's easier than ever when using the Slides mobile app.

Some pictures and thoughts were tweeted out about the session. You can follow everything about the conference using #migooglefest. Here's one attendee's comic frame using a picture we took in the session:

Just finished a day of Google PD with 5 other Brownell Broncos #migooglefest pic.twitter.com/3qw1Z9XOwE

— Bob Abel (@BobAbelWLGeek) September 21, 2015

I updated the resources on my comics site, which you can find here. Most of the updates were just in the presentation itself, but I changed some links and added some notes. The site contains information about using the comics in classroom creativity games too.

As always, I started the session off with a big picture look at the importance of creativity in learning.

4 Tipsheets for Navigating Google Classroom

These four tipsheets are about the most important pages in Google Classroom, each from the teacher's side of things. The most common tasks I'm asked about and the most overlooked options are marked with stars.

I am sharing them as Google Drawings so you can copy and modify them as necessary. You can easily download them as PDFs or image files if necessary.

• The Classes Page
• A Class Page
• The Assignments Page
• An Assignment Page

If these are helpful, you might also be interested in my tipsheet explaining the 3 ways to share assignment attachments in Google Classroom.

10 Ways Students Can Show Off Their Learning Beyond the Classroom...and PowerPoint is not one of them

Using The Cube to broadcast Geometry presentations

Two newer posts that provide updates to the items below:

• Tech Project Packs - Save time with these compiled resources for tech projects
• Adobe Spark for Narrated Slideshows and Digital Stories

This year my mantra is going to be Show off the learning!

When teachers and students show off the best things they learned, perceptions change and the culture changes. I want to make sure my district is known as a place where important learning happens every day.

I'm a big fan of that final essential stage of project-based learning: Put the final product in front of a larger audience. 

A lot of teachers in my district like hands-on, physical projects and they've struggled ideas for making them public. (How many art exhibits and science fairs can you do a year?) 

I compiled this list so now they have options for even those paintings done with real paint and the science experiment made of food.

Because I made this for the teachers I work with, please keep in mind:

• It is a tool for awareness, not a how-to guide. Teachers in my district would contact me for more help. I included examples and some links to tutorials or tips below, but all the tools will require further exploration beyond this post.
• Most classrooms in my district use laptops or Chromebooks. I didn't include options for tablets with most of the ideas.

I've listed these options roughly in order of how much tech is involved on the part of the students.

1) Live broadcasts of student presentations - Use The Cube. 

• You can broadcast to the internet easily with an iPhone or iPad. 
• Someone from your school will have to sign up and create an admin account at the site.
• Share the link to your broadcast with parents or to the community beforehand so anyone can watch live. 
• The recording can be left online, so people can watch it later if you want.
• When using live video, be sure you have parent permission to post online and remember not to identify students by first and last name.

2) Websites and Blogs - A simple site or blog (created by you or the students themselves) is the starting point for sharing all the other types of project presentations listed below.

• Any final product, even if it’s has no tech involved, can be posted online by way of pictures and text. 
• For websites, Google Sites is a good, simple option. I made this tutorial for my district for making a website with Google Sites.
• For blogs, use Blogger. Here’s a tutorial I made for creating a new one.

3) A PDF ebook - Within seconds anything students make in Google Docs or Slides can be turned into a PDF. From there it can be posted on any blog or website so anyone can open or download it like an ebook.

• With the file open, go to the File menu and select the option to Download as PDF.
• Once the PDF is downloaded, upload it to Drive again and share it as needed.

4) InfoPics - If he didn’t invent this simple concept, Tony Vincent is the one who named it and he sings its praises. This really is just a process of adding notes or other text to pictures that are related to a topic. 

• Here's Tony’s blog post about it (with examples).
• It would be very easy for students to make these and share the images on a website or blog.The pictures could also be shared by a teacher or a parent on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or any other social network.
• The device you like to use will dictate the tools, but I’d suggest Google Drawings for computers or Chromebooks. Pixlr.com is a good tool on many devices if you want to add more effects to your pictures.

5) Infographics - Students can create infographic images to show facts in a concise, visually appealing way.

• Finished graphics can be posted on social media or websites and blogs.
• Piktochart is a great tool for this.
• Users can log in on Piktochart with their Google accounts.
• Here’s a good article from Matt Smith with ideas for Piktochart in many subjects.

6) Audio Recordings (podcasts) - Students can create audio recordings and share them online in a variety of ways. These can be completed much faster than a video project. Here are a few details.

• Here’s a simple example of an interview between two students.
• On a PC with a microphone (or a laptop) Audacity is the program to use for recording.
• On a Chromebook you can try SoundCloud for recording (if editing isn’t necessary) or SoundTrap. Both work with Google accounts.
• Finished mp3 or wav files can be uploaded to SoundCloud so people can listen to them and even add comments.

7) Virtual books on Flipsnack - This site is a great tool that turns any PDF into a fun virtual book. 

• Important Note: I found out if students sign in using a Google Apps for Education account it uses the first and last name in the URLs. This is not a good practice. Be sure students go to their account page at Flipsnack to change their username when they first log in. It only takes a minute.
• I usually create the PDF in Google Slides or Google Docs first, then upload to Flipsnack.
• Here’s an example I use for a comic assignment.
• Users can sign into Flipsnack with their Google accounts.
• Free Flipsnack accounts are limited to three virtual books at a time.

8) Screen Recordings - Think of these as somewhat informal recordings of something the students show on the screen. 

• These are great for tutorials or presentations.
• Here’s an example from a teacher who has his students use this method a lot.
• They’re informal because editing is usually not part of the process. Students need to practice before recording!
• On a computer with a mic, use Screencast-o-Matic.
• On a Chromebook you can use the SnagIt app.
• Final results can be uploaded to Google Drive or YouTube for sharing as necessary.

9) Digital slideshows - These are a series of pictures combined into a video by using an editing program.

• These are a step up from screen recordings because you can (and should) edit them.
• Students can add audio. It might be just background music or they can narrate the slideshow.
• With narration, these become presentations that present themselves.
• They make a good introduction to video production, but don’t require as much time.
• I present on a method for making these with any laptop or Chromebook. Here is the resource site include my examples and the process using Google Slides and WeVideo.

10) Videos - Producing a good video is the pinnacle of technology integration in most classes.

• Good videos require several technology skills and a deep understanding of class content. 
• There is a huge range of possibilities for complexity. Don’t just tell students they can “make a video”! Know the options and set guidelines that are appropriate for your students.
• Here are my tips for teachers and students for any video project.

Google Boot Camp and Updated Comic Resources

This week I spent two days at the Genesee ISD for their Google Boot Camp. I presented a session on using Drawings and Slides to create comics.

I also taught a group how to make narrated slideshows using Slides and WeVideo.

There were a lot of great ideas shared. As always, the best and most lasting benefits will be the connections we made with other passionate, innovative educators.

If you want to follow the hashtag on Twitter, it was #gisdcamp15. You'll find several good people to follow there.

All my resources are at these two sites:

• Creative Comics - I updated the presentation and included new information about the improved Slides app.
• Narrated Slideshows

And many other presenters shared their resources on this page.

If you found this post helpful you might also want to see:

• Tips for Chromebook basics
• How to capture and Mark Up Images with a Chromebook
• Google Apps Tutorials - Summer PD from 2014

How to Capture and Mark Up Images on a Chromebook

I recently posted some tips for Chromebook basics and referred to a process I have used for annotating on screen captures using the devices. Below you'll find a video tutorial that shows the process.

Note that the first part of the video requires you to capture a part of the screen by pressing the shortcut keys:

ctrl-shift-Show all windows

The Show all windows key is the 6th key from the left in the top row. At least that's where it has been on all the Chromebooks I've used. It looks like this:

The general steps are:

• Capture an area of the screen with the above method.
• Copy the capture to the clipboard.
• Paste it in a Google Drawing.
• Mark it up using the tools available in Google Drawings.
• Capture the image again using the above method.
• Copy it and paste it where needed.

By the way, I know the SnagIt app and extension will allow you to do this. I prefer my method because it gives me more options for how I mark up the image. I love the SnagIt app (which I used to record the video above), but sometimes when I capture images and add arrows it takes too long to show up in my Drive as an image.

If you found this post helpful you might also want to see:

• Using a Chromebook to Make a Narrated Slideshow
• Google Apps Tutorials - Summer PD from 2014

How to use the Google Slides mobile app to make comics from real life photos

A lot of teachers have been using my process for creating comics with Google tools. I was thrilled to find it can now be easily done using the Slides mobile app! The best part of this is now you can bring in the real world pictures very easily.

If you haven't seen the general process and possible final products, you can read all about it on this page from my Education On Air presentation from a few weeks ago.

That process starts on a Chromebook or a computer and it uses either Google Drawings or Slides.

Now you can start in the Slides mobile app. I did this on an iPad, but the Android app will be similar.

First, start a new Slides presentation.

On a blank slide, click the + sign and select Image.

Choose to get the image From Photos or From Camera. Notice that if you use the camera, this is an amazingly simple way to immediately bring the real world into your creations!

Crop, resize and move the image as necessary.

To add comic elements, click the + again and select Shape this time.

Select Callouts and scroll down to the three comic elements. Choose the one you want.

From there, it's just a matter of placing the thought or word bubble, dragging the point to the character who is speaking or thinking and then entering the text. Here's my sample taken from a game I was playing with my son.

A few things to consider:

• While the tools are easy to use on the app, you might prefer to just use the app to bring the pictures into the Slides presentation. Then you (and any collaborators) can open that presentation on a Chromebook or computer for easy editing. 
• See my two-minute tutorial on creating the comics using a computer. The first steps are now replaced by the import process above, but the rest of the video shows the details of adding and editing the comic elements.
• You can change the background color of the slides by editing the presentation on a computer or Chromebook at any time.
• See the Projects page of my website for possible end products we make such as PDFs, virtual books or videos.

miGoogle presentation for Comics and Creativity Games with Google Tools

This week I had to privilege of presenting at the miGoogle conference in Brighton, Michigan, along with dozens of great educators from around the state.

My topic was a very simple one--how to make comics by combining real life pictures with a few tools from Google Drawings or Slides.

Here's the website with all my resources, including:

• My presentation slides
• An example comic we started during the session
• Related tutorials
• Our sample project, including how to turn the comics into ebooks and videos
• Information on my creativity games

I shared many of these resources throughout other posts on this blog, but this one place to find them all as well as additional things I shared only at the conference.

If you want to see the sample comic we started during the session, it's here:

Comic Assignment with Google Drawings, Slides, WeVideo and Flipsnack

This week I continued our comic assignment with two more parts. (Click here to see how we started the project.)

First, students used Google Slides to convert their comics to a PDF. Then that was uploaded at Flipsnack to turn it into a virtual book.

For the final step, we are converting those same comic images into a video using WeVideo.

The assignments sheets are here:

• Comic Assignment 2 - Creating an eBook
• Comic Assignment 3 - Turning Your Comic into a Video

Here's an example (just four pages) of how these ebooks look on Flipsnack.

And below is the tutorial I created that shows how to use WeVideo to make a simple video slideshow. As explained in assignment 3, there is no audio. Also, there is a table of contents that makes it easy to jump to just the short parts you need based on the steps of the assignment.

Comic Assignment with Google Drawings

Back in April I posted about using Google Drawings to make comics. Since then, I've had a chance to use it in a couple settings. Below I'm linking to the latest assignment I created for our high school Digital Media class.

First, here's the outline:

• We took pictures of two students who posed with a few emotions.
• The pictures were uploaded to a shared Google Drive folder where students could access them.
• The rest of the class looked at the pictures and planned their original stories.
• Using the process shown in a video tutorial, students added word bubbles and thought bubbles to make comics.

You can view a copy of the assignment here. It has a link in the assignment to the shared folder of pictures and the video tutorial.

Follow-up assignments will show the students how to turn the images into an ebook and a video version of their stories. Those additional steps will appear here on the blog after we use them in class.

The Tutorial

If you want to see the video tutorial that shows how to create the comics, it's here. Note that this was for our students, so I refer to the teacher by name in one part. If you're using it in class, just explain your students would share it with you.

Using Google Drawings for Comic Creation

I was reminded recently that Google Drawings has Callouts in the shapes of speech and thought bubbles. Used in conjunction with the app on a mobile device, this makes a great tool for collaborative comic creation.

I put together this quick sample using a few pictures I had on my iPad from a PD day in our district. Ideally the pictures would be of actors or maybe toys or other objects set up according to a script.

Here's the process:
1)  Take pictures of the actors or objects for the comic. You could draw these on paper and take pictures or make them in a graphics program too.

2)  Upload the pictures to Google Drive using the app (if using a mobile device) or with the computer (if you created them in a graphics program on a computer).

3)  Using a computer, create a new Drawing in Google Drive. Share it with anyone who will be working on the same project.

4)  Set the background color.

5)  Add each picture and edit/arrange them. I found this order worked best overall. You'd repeat this for each frame of your comic on the page:

• Import the picture.
• Crop it with the crop tool.
• Resize it as necessary.
• Set the line width and color if you want borders.
• Move it to the correct place.
• Add the Callouts from the Object dropdown. You'll see speech bubbles in a few shapes and a thought bubble. 

• "Draw" the speech or thought bubble on your picture. 
• Drag the "tail" of it to the person talking or thinking.
• Type the text in the speech or thought bubble(s).
• Resize and move the bubble and text as necessary.

6)  Add any other text boxes or text to the Drawing.

7)  Download as a jpg image and share with others if necessary.

8)  Copy or import the image file into a shared Google Document. There it can be a page of a book made up of a series of such pages/images. You could put it in a Google Presentation too if it's more likely to be displayed that way.

Teach anything with just three apps?

I am a minimalist. I love finding ways to do more with a lot less. I hope someone speaks at my funeral about how I touched the world in a significant way using only what fits with me in the casket. It could make a great visual.  If nothing else, I’ll be clutching my iPad.

I was recently musing about what’s the least a teacher would need to teach anything. I tweeted this and it got a little bit of attention:

I think I could teach anything-CCSS, 4 C's, etc-using only an iPad with browser, 30 Hands and iMovie. Kids supply the ideas and style.
— Mike Petty (@mpetty39) August 21, 2013

I was exaggerating somewhat, mostly because I didn’t really go through all the CCSS and I had to fit it in 140 characters. I would certainly need a few other apps, even if just for recording notes while working. I’ll give a slightly longer list of the bare necessities below, but first here was my main thought behind this.

As I’ve written elsewhere, I think all learning should be posed as a creative problem solving activity involving three steps: find information, process it and present the solution.

Elaborating a little more, students need to

• research the problem at hand and gather resources or information that they already know. 
• process all that, getting their brains around it, synthesizing seemingly unrelated ideas, adding in their own thoughts. 
• present it in a way that suits the people who need to hear the solution.

So my tweet assumed that the iPad has a browser and the learner can access the Internet. That can help a lot with the “find it” stage.

30 Hands and iMovie are my favorite apps for narrated slideshows or videos, respectively. They’d be used for the presentation piece.

Being a little more realistic, I’d need some apps that would let them store the things they find. They also would need to process it all. I gave it more thought and made this list of suggested apps. I’m including the two I already mentioned, just to give more detail.

30 Hands - This is a great free tool for slideshows and I have a demo and review about it here. You can use your pictures as backgrounds, add text and draw on the slides. It is very simple to record narration for each slide, then it exports as a movie to the Camera Roll. I love it!

iMovie - I don’t usually by apps that cost $4.99, but this app feels like it’s worth so much more. You can easily add pan and zoom effects to pictures you’ve taken and edit videos you recorded (or even those slideshows you made with 30 Hands). It is also simple to add narration, transitions and titles. It’s a portable video studio.

Google Drive - Information gathered in research and your own thoughts could easily be taken in the Notes app that comes with the iPad. But Google Drive is free, so why not add this to the list? Sure, it’s limited compared to the version you’d have on your desktop computer, but I’m still amazed with how useful it is for productivity.

Doodle Buddy or SketchBook Express - Both of these drawing apps are free. These would be mostly for the presentation part of the process. We use them in school for titles and other graphics. Doodle Buddy is extremely simple. SketchBook has layers and some very good drawing tools making it promising, but possibly more complex than you’d need for most projects.

Inkflow - I haven’t paid for the Plus version of this yet, so for me this is like a stack of paper and a black marker. I love it for flow charts and visual thinking, so it’s definitely a tool for the processing stage of the learning process. You can also export the drawings and notes as jpg or PDF to use them in presentations too. (Side note: When talking at the coffee shop, this app becomes the proverbial napkin on which I illustrate my ramblings.)

Voice Record Pro - This audio recording app is incredibly versatile because of all the apps you can export it to. Files also can be opened in iMovie as the background track. So presentations can be recorded as a speech or conversation, then in iMovie you can add pictures or images you drew using any of the above apps. It also converts to mp3 so you can send it to others in a flexible format. (Bonus: I’m not including Video Star as a “must have”, but if you record yourself playing live music with Voice Record Pro it exports to Video Star so you can lip sync. Fun!) I wish Voice Record Pro had better tools for editing, but for free it is great.

GarageBand - I debated about including this app because original music is usually not necessary in a presentation. Still, there will be some topics where such a projects will be greatly enhanced because of the possibilities of this app. (And for some students it can make all the difference.) Like iMovie, it is $4.99, but whenever I use it I find myself sticking it in people’s faces, raving about how much it does for that small price. All the virtual and Smart instruments are outstanding.  For the basics, it is very intuitive to record and edit tracks.  As with Voice Record Pro, you could use this for any audio recordings. It certainly has more editing capabilities than that app, though sometimes I need iTunes on my computer to get the files where I need them.

So there you have it. I’m going to give my minimalist approach a try this school year as much as possible. I’ll edit this as necessary.

What am I overlooking? Are there any other apps you consider to be the bare necessities?