This post serves two purposes. First, I wanted to highlight Why Did the Chicken...?. It's a terribly simple, fun classroom game that lends itself to creativity. I played it with many students over the years and we had a ton of laughs with it. I mentioned it in my previous post as a game that came out of some work that I did with the designer, Kory Heath.
Also, this video was created with the Videolicious app for iPad. It's a great little tool for making video reports that are 50 seconds or less. Take some pictures or video, then record yourself talking about it. The app takes care of the rest. It is great fun for free. I can see it coming in handy for quick reports for student news.
Technology, creativity and passion in learning
Monday, April 2, 2012
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Inspiring Creativity
For example, my friend Kory Heath has designed some great games, both for the iPhone/iPad and the board and card variety. I met up with Kory yesterday for the first time in probably four years. I reflected on his work and realized that for almost a decade now his games have served to entertain my after school game groups and reunions with my former students. I pass along these links below in hopes that one or more could be an inspiring launch pad for a creative, curious young gamer or programmer.
Kory is probably most well known among board game players for his game Zendo. It is a fascinating inductive puzzle game. He regularly gets email from teachers who use the game in class.
When it comes to fun games for iOS, these three are recommended:
- Tesla Blocks - This is a review of the most recent game he programmed. My son has recently been hooked on it.
- Blockhouse - Here's a great twist on a sliding puzzle. Be sure to look at the article on that page about how he built the game. It's a good read for any aspiring game designer.
- Werewolf - This is Kory's version of the classic parlor game. It's a great implementation that I highly recommend.
As a creative individual, Kory always leaves me with much to think about after our conversations. Here's an interview I did with him several years ago. It provides a glimpse into our common interests and why I enjoy the chance to work with him.
One story I love to tell about Kory was when we first made contact online. I had just read and been amazed by his design history of Zendo, so I sent him an email. I told him his work sounded fascinating and I suggested that he come to Protospiel, a game designer convention that I hosted in Michigan. He was several states away and the convention was in only a couple days, so I told him he should attend the next year. He wrote me back almost immediately to inform me he had just finished packing to leave for Protospiel in the morning. We met that week and had an amazing time talking about possible game ideas. One of them eventually turned into Why Did the Chicken...?.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Two Apps for Digital Storytelling
I have been working with teachers at all grade levels the past three weeks to do more digital storytelling. Some teachers are focusing on just narrated video slideshows instead of actual stories. Either way, having a video at the end of a project is a great way for students and teachers to show off their best work.
We don't have classroom sets of iPads in our district, but several teachers have them and others have iPhones. So I looked for a couple very simple apps that would allow teachers and students to quickly put together stories that at least have pictures and narration. Here are the ones I have been using. Both are for the iPhone, but they work well on the iPad.
Story Kit - I love how this one makes the stories in book form, with separate pages. It makes it so easy to edit the story in parts, one page at a time. If you mess up narration you only have to do the page over that you are on. It also allows for text and some limited drawing. The downside is that the final stories are best viewed as books just on the device. You can upload them to a website, but there the book displays on a single webpage with all pages of the story visible at once.
Storyrobe - This app is my preferred one because it outputs to a video in the Camera Roll. It breaks the process of making a story into three very simple steps. First you gather pictures and these can be from the Camera Roll or you can take them through the app. Next you "edit", which amounts to putting the pictures in order. Finally, record your narration. As you record (up to three minutes) you can bring up each picture as at the appropriate time in the narration. There are no transitions or features that allow panning or zooming. Again, I see this as pure simplicity and I love it for the students who can get distracted by advanced options. The only downside is there's no way to redo just a part of the audio. One mistake during recording and you have to do it all over...or just live with the mistake. It also doesn't seem to save multiple stories, so consider this for projects where the story will be recorded in one sitting.
We don't have classroom sets of iPads in our district, but several teachers have them and others have iPhones. So I looked for a couple very simple apps that would allow teachers and students to quickly put together stories that at least have pictures and narration. Here are the ones I have been using. Both are for the iPhone, but they work well on the iPad.
Story Kit - I love how this one makes the stories in book form, with separate pages. It makes it so easy to edit the story in parts, one page at a time. If you mess up narration you only have to do the page over that you are on. It also allows for text and some limited drawing. The downside is that the final stories are best viewed as books just on the device. You can upload them to a website, but there the book displays on a single webpage with all pages of the story visible at once.
Storyrobe - This app is my preferred one because it outputs to a video in the Camera Roll. It breaks the process of making a story into three very simple steps. First you gather pictures and these can be from the Camera Roll or you can take them through the app. Next you "edit", which amounts to putting the pictures in order. Finally, record your narration. As you record (up to three minutes) you can bring up each picture as at the appropriate time in the narration. There are no transitions or features that allow panning or zooming. Again, I see this as pure simplicity and I love it for the students who can get distracted by advanced options. The only downside is there's no way to redo just a part of the audio. One mistake during recording and you have to do it all over...or just live with the mistake. It also doesn't seem to save multiple stories, so consider this for projects where the story will be recorded in one sitting.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
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.
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.
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:
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.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Critical Thinking Game for the Classroom
I know this game has been referred to throughout this blog, but I wanted to centralize some of the resources for both high tech and no-tech variations are described below.
Years ago I made a game that I used in the classroom for lessons about goals and priorities. If used properly, it can be an excellent starting point for critical thinking and other higher level thinking skills in any subject area with any students from about age 10 and older.
I have played it with many students from middle school through college (here is a video I made with some former students at one campus) over the years and I have come to respect the power of the question that it raises. Whether it is used as a game or a classroom activity, participants are simply asked the question What matters most? By carefully choosing the items and guiding the discussion, this can be a powerful catalyst for self-evaluation and problem solving.
Using the game without technology
The game I created can be purchased as a traditional (card based) party game. This is the version I used most in class. I would use a select subset of the cards based on the purpose of the activity. From that, I’d randomly draw five cards and have students rank the items on the cards from most important to least important. We would usually try to guess how another person in the room would rank them.
After such an introduction, students can play the game in groups of up to 8. It works best when students can play in pairs.
The Inexpensive Option - Right now a friend of mine is selling the old edition of the complete game (called What's It To Ya?) for less than $4. I no longer get royalties from that edition, so this announcement is not meant to pad my wallet! If you want to pick up a few copies (5 copies would allow up to 40 students play), check it out on this page at Fair Play Games while it’s on sale. This is a bargain, believe me.
The Newer Edition - If you want the newer version, it’s probably easiest to find it here on Amazon. The new publisher created a version that uses a board and score sheets. It sells for around $20.
Here's a video overview created with the Videolicious app on an iPad.
Using the game with technology
I posted several free activities on Promethean Planet based on this game. They work easily with Promethean’s ActivExpressions for ranking, but you can run the activity with any response system or the students can rank them on paper. A free version of ActivInspire will allow you to display these without actually using their other products, so any computer and projector will be sufficient.
Here is the original, generic activity that allows students to draw random words for the original game.
Oh Really Flipchart Activity
And the versions below are targeted toward a specific subject area with pre-selected sets of words and questions in context. By examining these as samples it will be obvious how you can adapt them to your needs even if these don’t fit perfectly.
Government
Family and Consumer Science
Vocations and GoalsDebate
Christian/Bible Studies
The version with the most downloads so far is this "Back to School" edition. It can be used as an ice breaker in the first days of school or of a particular class:
Back to School
And finally, here is a simple Google Presentation version that you could change to use the activity in any subject. You can put the question of what matters most into context, such as What makes a good citizen? Then list items related to that. Or you can keep it general. See the above flipchart activities for ideas. (Even if you don't want to install the free version of ActivInspire to view them you can see a preview at the site that will be useful in adapting the free Google Presentation version to your needs.)
And if anyone is interested in the history of the game, here is a video I created a few weeks ago about my experience with bringing a game idea into reality.
Years ago I made a game that I used in the classroom for lessons about goals and priorities. If used properly, it can be an excellent starting point for critical thinking and other higher level thinking skills in any subject area with any students from about age 10 and older.
I have played it with many students from middle school through college (here is a video I made with some former students at one campus) over the years and I have come to respect the power of the question that it raises. Whether it is used as a game or a classroom activity, participants are simply asked the question What matters most? By carefully choosing the items and guiding the discussion, this can be a powerful catalyst for self-evaluation and problem solving.
Using the game without technology
The game I created can be purchased as a traditional (card based) party game. This is the version I used most in class. I would use a select subset of the cards based on the purpose of the activity. From that, I’d randomly draw five cards and have students rank the items on the cards from most important to least important. We would usually try to guess how another person in the room would rank them.
After such an introduction, students can play the game in groups of up to 8. It works best when students can play in pairs.
The Inexpensive Option - Right now a friend of mine is selling the old edition of the complete game (called What's It To Ya?) for less than $4. I no longer get royalties from that edition, so this announcement is not meant to pad my wallet! If you want to pick up a few copies (5 copies would allow up to 40 students play), check it out on this page at Fair Play Games while it’s on sale. This is a bargain, believe me.
The Newer Edition - If you want the newer version, it’s probably easiest to find it here on Amazon. The new publisher created a version that uses a board and score sheets. It sells for around $20.
Here's a video overview created with the Videolicious app on an iPad.
Using the game with technology
I posted several free activities on Promethean Planet based on this game. They work easily with Promethean’s ActivExpressions for ranking, but you can run the activity with any response system or the students can rank them on paper. A free version of ActivInspire will allow you to display these without actually using their other products, so any computer and projector will be sufficient.
Here is the original, generic activity that allows students to draw random words for the original game.
Oh Really Flipchart Activity
And the versions below are targeted toward a specific subject area with pre-selected sets of words and questions in context. By examining these as samples it will be obvious how you can adapt them to your needs even if these don’t fit perfectly.
Government
Family and Consumer Science
Vocations and GoalsDebate
Christian/Bible Studies
The version with the most downloads so far is this "Back to School" edition. It can be used as an ice breaker in the first days of school or of a particular class:
Back to School
And finally, here is a simple Google Presentation version that you could change to use the activity in any subject. You can put the question of what matters most into context, such as What makes a good citizen? Then list items related to that. Or you can keep it general. See the above flipchart activities for ideas. (Even if you don't want to install the free version of ActivInspire to view them you can see a preview at the site that will be useful in adapting the free Google Presentation version to your needs.)
And if anyone is interested in the history of the game, here is a video I created a few weeks ago about my experience with bringing a game idea into reality.
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