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...

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 - Getting Started

I posted a few days ago about the project I am doing with an all girls science class at the middle school. The teacher named it G.E.M.S., after a similar course she found online. It stands for Girls Engaged in Math and Science. In the project, the girls will use Gamestar Mechanic to create computer games about energy flow in an ecosystem. The fifth grade students in the district will play the games and be assessed to see how well the games teach the concepts.

I have worked with the class for five days now and the project is going very well. Generally I have thought of the game design projects as appealing to the disengaged male students, but the girls have really been enjoying it.

Here is the flow of the project:

1) First the teacher provided a quick review of the concept of energy flow in ecosystems. Students were required to choose an ecosystem and fill out a flow chart that included producers and consumers in that ecosystem.

2) To introduce what Gamestar Mechanic games look like, I had the girls play some sample games from Kevin Hodgson's project. They had to answer a few questions about the games after trying them. The assignment is here: Sample Games Assignment

3) Next, the students had to sign up at Gamestar Mechanic in my classroom and they began the Quest. The site uses the Quest to teach the students the aspects of good game design and also how to use the tools there. I was very curious to see how the girls would take to playing through so many levels. In case they got bored or frustrated with the gaming, I tried to break up the class periods with at least one other assignment so they were not playing continually during any single hour.

It has worked very well so far. No group has completed all the levels yet, but they are not tiring of the process. Many are anxious to get started on their own games, but they need to at least complete the first Quest to be able to publish their games for others to play. (I have a Premium account at Gamestar which provides a second Quest, but most will not need to proceed into that one to get the resources they need.)

4) One assignment that I used during this time is a Game Flow Chart. It expands upon what they did with the ecosystem flow chart, but it also incorporates more facts and the game elements that they discovered in the sample games and in the Quest. That assignment is here: Game Flow Chart Assignment

The plan is to continue some planning and storyboard assignments while they work through the Quest and some necessary Challenges. (The Challenges provide optional levels that allow students to earn additional sprites. Some of those will be necessary for an engaging, educational game.)

One other assignment we used was a journal warm-up assignment. I point this out because it is based on some of James Paul Gee's learning principles from What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy. I loved the book and this journal assignment was my first attempt to see if the principles are effective with these girls. I wanted them to consider themselves within the roles of scientist, game designer and teacher.

Journal Assignment 1

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.

Explorations in Creative Technology Projects

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.