Computer Game Design in the Classroom - App Inventor

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.)

And here's the classroom project that it was derived from.

Positives

• 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.
• Many resources are available for educators.  I have a lot of exploring to do in that area of their website.

Negatives

• 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.

For my next installment, I will provide some thoughts on a resource I have more classroom experience with.

Programming with Stencyl - How will it work in the classroom?

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.

If you have suggestions for where I can find more ideas to get started, I'll be glad to hear them.

Real Life Problem Solving in School

When it comes to creative problem solving in school, nothing beats a project that goes beyond the school walls and actually helps other people.  Here's an inspiring story of a couple high school seniors who did just that.  Their senior project helped a teacher and students on the other side of the world to achieve their dream of getting connected to the internet.

Check out the introduction video below and these links:

• More videos on their YouTube channel
• The official website

This is a great example of how much learning can come out of a project rooted in a passion with a purpose to meet a genuine need.  One other takeaway:  In a world filled with need, the learning never stops.  See how they are continuing a second phase of their project long after the two students graduated.

What similar projects could we inspire student to pursue in the upcoming school year?  Beyond that, please consider supporting this project and spreading the word about the work as it continues.

Interactive Game Assignment 2 - Career Quizzes

Last winter I worked on an interactive game project with high school students where they created Christmas games using ActivInspire.  We modified the assignment for the second semester and based the quiz games on careers.

Here's a list of the parts of the assignment with links to my sample resources.

• Intro to ActivInspire - I didn't create a file for this.  I just showed the class how to make some basic art.
• Title and Template Pages - Students were required to create more art and make some pages in ActivInspire.
• Career Questions - They were required to write10 questions related to their career or career planning in general.
• Final Game Flipchart - They put everything together into an interactive flipchart for the final step.

The flipcharts are being added here as we upload them.  You'll find examples from the Christmas games there too.

In other flipchart news, my own games are posted on this page at Promethean Planet.  Here are some points to note:

• My most downloaded game is This or That? and it will likely pass 2,000 downloads this week.  It's a personal milestone. 
• My Oh, Really! flipcharts have been downloaded over 3,000 times in all.  The original will probably pass 1,000 downloads this week.  Again, the numbers are not as high as many other flipcharts on Promethean Planet, but it is great to know the games have reached many teachers and students.
• And I posted a Jeopardy flipchart a few weeks back that a friend made.  It contains 17 trivia questions based on Romeo and Juliet.  I helped with some of the technical aspects of setting it up. 

And I was experimenting with Animoto and the pictures I took for this project...

Being Heard Above the Noise

This is pretty much shameless self-promotion, but I will put a teacher spin on it.  When I introduce lessons, especially at the grade 6 - 12 level, I often talk about how technology makes things easier.  However, the problem is that we don't get jobs doing easy things.  So the question becomes, as technology makes many things easier, what's still difficult?  I believe in general it is...

• Finding new ideas.
• Making new things.
• Attracting attention.

And that's how I sum up the 21st Century Learning Skills -- Finding, processing and presenting information.  

This post is about the third item on the list.  How does one attract attention in a world saturated with information?  This makes a great challenge to bring up as the class plans the next project based learning unit.  How can we reach a bigger audience than we did last time?

Well, when it comes to a message or a product, there's no substitute for quality.  But we all know my good idea might not find its way to light before your very similar and equally good idea does.  So there's a lot to presentation and getting the word out there.  I have learned a lot about this from regularly reading Michael Hyatt's blog.  

Finding connections within a niche market and getting support from leaders within it is key.  A couple months back I did some promotions for a game I made and this week it was reviewed by someone with more pull than I have.  He posted a review for my game King for a Day here.  (There's my shameless self-promotion.)  I'm glad it received some praise at that site and the author was kind enough to post the review on several other outlets.

Of course, that's good for his own site as well.  To return the favor, I do strongly suggest you check out the Father Geek site.    Even if a lot of the reviews are for things that don't interest you, I bet you have some students who would love to play with or at least find out about the products.  It's worth skimming over from time to time.

So I remind students to create quality work as judged by their target audience and their own design goals.  Also, get it in the hands of people who will spread the word.  Finally, return the favor as best you can.  None of this guarantees a product will hit it big, but it is the way of our information rich, socially connected world.  Even if you don't come up with the next big thing in your niche market you will certainly make some good friends (though you may never see them face to face) and you'll enjoy the journey.

Game Design and Ecosystems - Project Overview

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:

• Introduction
• Getting Started
• Planning the Games
• More requirements for the Games
• Storyboards
• Final Assignments
• Sample Games

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.

Game Design and Ecosystems - Sample Games

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.

The Rainforest Journey

Click here to see the quiz for the above game.

The Producer - Felix's Journey

Click here to see the quiz for the above game.

Game Design and Ecosystems - Storyboards

I based the storyboard portion of our project this lesson by Kevin Hodgson posted at the Gamestar Mechanic Teacher portion of the site.

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:

• The level number and title
• Whether it is a top down or platform level
• An explanation of the goal
• The types of enemies that the hero will encounter
• Where the hero starts
• Where points and the goal marker will be
• A picture that maps out the entire level

Here are some examples from our class.

Game Design and Ecosystems - Part 3

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.

Game Design and Ecosystems - Continuing the Project

The game design project is going still well with our group of girls. If you want to look back at my previous posts about this:

• Here's the brief introduction to the project.
• And here's the post on how we started.

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
  

Game Design and Ecosystems

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.

I should mention too that I came across Mr. Hodgson's site from a link at the amazing Free Technology for Teachers blog.

Game Publishing for the Classroom

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.