My Story - iPad app for digital storytelling

I originally posted this because they were doing a free special for the app.  I see it now is listed for $1.99.

The My Story app reminds me a lot of what I liked about StoryRobe and StoryKit, but it's all combined in one polished app made for iPad.

I have only had a little time to explore it so far, but I wanted to point it out as a useful tool for making a nice ebook.  Pages can diplay a picture and text and narration can be recorded as well.  I could see this being appropriate for any elementary students.  While the secondary students could certainly use it, by that time I'd like to see them doing more with video.

It allows the user to import or take pictures.  Some editing can be done with paint tools, though I found I had to write or draw slowly.  It lagged after making a mark or two.

Narration is simple to record or delete page by page.

The files are in epub format.  I am able to open them easily in iBook on my iPad.  The app itself will display them too.  There are other sharing options, but if you don't have something on your computer to open epub files you'll only get a file you can't view.

Pegged - A fun game based learning activity for a variety of subjects

This lesson is based on a simple Flash game that asks students to match people with items that describe them.  The game is fun using friends' names, but it can be played using names from any content area that involves characters or people.  For example, a literature or history class could provide several fictional or real life characters to use in the lesson.Students 10 years old and up should enjoy the activity.

Summary of the Game

First, take a look at my Flash game Pegged.  It is located here.

It's a very simple game of matching the players to different descriptions, things they'd say or things they might like. For example, imagine playing with three of your friends and you have to match yourself and them to these items:

• "Whatever!"
• Football
• Sing
• Likely to trip

(To provide for more options, each round includes one more description than player along with one name tag labeled "No One". You can always put the "No One" tag with the description that doesn't fit any of your friends.)

The game last for three quick rounds. Players earn points by making the same matches that their friends do. But scoring points isn't as much fun as trying to peg your friends and then arguing about who was right and wrong.

Using the game as a learning activity

In this activity, students (in groups of four) will play a regular game of Pegged to understand how it works. Then they will play additional rounds using characters or people studied in the class. A short reflective writing assignment wraps up the lesson.

In way of background, I love John Paul Gee's book What Video Games Have to Teach Us about Learning and Literacy and this lesson is directly inspired by it. Among other things, the author points out in the book that real learning happens when the learners take on other roles and when they consider relationships between areas of knowledge (what Gee calls semiotic domains)*.

The book was a fascinating read that changed the way I see education. As with this game, I always look for ways to get students to put themselves in other roles or to compare what we are studying to their everyday lives.

The Lesson

Every student needs a computer. If they each have a laptop or netbook, that will be easiest. If they are at computers in a lab environment, that will work too, but they'll have to change seats as they play the game.

Part 1: Playing Pegged as themselves

• Explain how the game works first or show a sample round on a computer.
• Form Groups of four students (with some groups of 3 as necessary).
• One student should start a game using the names of the students. Passing the computer around (or sitting at one computer) they each take their turns through the three rounds of the game. As indicated by the game, students cannot look at the screen when it's not their turn.
• When each round of the game ends, the results will be displayed. Students should look over who matched each player with which description. Lively discussion will likely follow depending on the random items that came up in the game.

Note: Depending on the class and the time of year it is, some students may not know each other well enough to make informed decisions in the game. It will be best if they can form groups with students they know as well as possible. If this will be difficult, remind them that this part of the assignment is just so they can learn to play Pegged.

Part 2: Playing Pegged as someone else
Now, explain to students that they need to play the game again (with the same groups) but they will represent someone from your content area. It is suggested that you present a limited list of people or characters for them to choose from, but you might want to leave it very open ended so they can choose for themselves. For example, in a U.S. History class they might put some familiar names from the founding of the nation such as Washington, Franklin, Adams, and Jefferson.

Each student should pick one person/character whom he or she will represent in his or her group.

Now it's time to play the game again, but there's one important difference this time around. Each player in the group will start a game by listing all the people/characters for their group. 

They should start with their character first, then each of the others in the order that they'll take turns (though a strict order for those players isn't absolutely necessary). So a group of four will actually be starting four separate games, but they only need to play one round in each game (using each computer when their turn comes up).

Note that students can enter just the last name or even initials of the people or characters.

One other point: While playing, each student needs to consider all the characters, not just the one he or she is "playing". For example, if Joe is Washington, he will still have to match all other characters to different descriptions. He only represents Washington in the sense that that when a computer says it's Washington's turn, Joe takes the turn. It's not so much that they are taking on the role (as in acting or thinking like the characters), but that they are using concepts from their real lives to compare with what they know about those characters.

"Wait, what does _____ have to do with Jefferson or Washington?!?"
Yes, sometimes there will be a few descriptions that come up that are almost impossible to match with any of the characters. That's the fun of it. Is Jefferson or Washington more likely to go with Football? Or maybe Franklin with Watches TV?? The goal is not so much to get a "right" answer, but to think about those people and characters as much as possible and make some connection. As long as another student matches the same character to the same description, it's worth at least one point. If after some consideration the student can only make a random match for some, that will provide enough thought to be useful in the writing part of the assignment.


Part 3: The writing
When all students have played one round, they should get back the computer that they started their game on (or sit at that computer) then begin the writing portion of the assignment.

Display these steps for the writing assignment or print this pdf version.

1) Grab a screen capture of the Results page for your game in which you took the first turn.

On a Windows system you can do this by simply pressing the Print Screen key (usually located in the upper right of the keyboard). On a Mac, press Command-Control-Shift-3. That puts a copy of the screen in the clipboard.

2) Paste the screen capture into the document file you're writing your assignment in. Use ctrl-v on a Windows system or command-v on a Mac to paste the image of your screen. You can change the size or crop it to make it easier to see the results of the game.

(If you forget to take a screen capture before you click the Next button your group will have to play the game again. Please capture and paste that screen as soon as possible after the game ends so you don't lose the information!)

3) Now write a few paragraphs about the round you played. In those paragraphs, address the questions below. Your writing should flow like a written summary, not a list of answers. You can address these in any order you like as long as all answers are apparent in your writing.

• List the people or characters that your group chose and the five descriptions you had to match.
• Indicate how you paired the people/characters with the descriptions and briefly explain why you chose those matches.
• Were some people/characters harder to find a matching description than others were? Why do you think that was the case?
• Were some descriptions harder to match with any character than others? Why do you think that was the case?
• Look at the rankings that the other students in your group chose. Pick a student's matches that are different from yours and explain how it differed. 
• Imagine you had to convince that student that your matches were correct or more accurate. What would you say to change his or her mind? What do you think that student would say to make you think his or her matches were best? 
• If any matches made by a student in your group stand out as particularly surprising, describe them and why you find them surprising.
• As you were playing or after reflecting on the game, what are two things about one or more characters that you learned or hadn't thought of before? 
• In what ways, if any, do you think it helped to match the characters to terms from today's world? Explain.

*Here are the two principles from Gee's book, in his own words. I am simplifying the second one in this lesson, but I believe it captures the important part of the concept.

Meta-level thinking about Semiotic Domain PrincipleLearning involves active and critical thinking about the relationships of the semiotic domain being learned to other semiotic domains.

Identity PrincipleLearning involves taking on and playing with identities in such a a way that the learner has real choices (in developing the virtual identity) and ample opportunity to meditate on the relationship between new identities and old ones. There is a tripartite play of identities as learners relate, and reflect on, their multiple real-world identities, a virtual identity, and a projective identity.

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.

Creativity Game for Back to School - Another Say Anything flipchart

I created a back-to-school version of my popular Say Anything flipchart that I posted earlier in the summer.

This fun, new edition can be downloaded here.  It is a flipchart file for Promethean's ActivInspire software.

Say Anything is a great game from North Star Games that lets students think outside of the box.  In this adaptation for the classroom I picked some questions that would be good to talk about when returning to school after summer break.

For my flipcharts based on published games I try to stick with questions or content from the boxed games.  In this case, the questions work well, but you can easily modify them to better fit your school or students.  Additional questions are included on the second to last slide.

Remember that the Say Anything activities are simple exercises for creativity that provide an excellent introduction to the other creativity games I have featured on this site.  Consider starting the year off with this one, then continuing each week or so with another activity.

Some flipcharts are still being recovered after the move from Promethean Planet, so just contact me if you're looking for something you can't easily find.

Free online version of What's It to Ya? - A critical thinking and writing lesson

There is great value in the workplace and in our society in general to be able to express and discuss one's values in a clear, logical manner.  It is also important to be able to communicate effectively with others with whom we differ in opinions.  What's It to Ya? (and the newer version, Oh, Really!) is a game I created that provides a fun, non-threatening way for students to practice this deep level of critical thinking and discussion.

There are card versions of the game available as well as several free activities that I made based on the game.  This lesson plan below uses a free computer version of the game as an introduction to the thinking, writing and discussion that can emerge while playing.

Lesson Overview

Using the online version of What's It to Ya?, students will rank random items in order of importance and try to guess each other's rankings.  In playing the game and writing about the activity they will consider their own values and opinions as well as explore those of their classmates.  For information on further thoughts and additional activities based on this game, see this mini-series of posts.

Learning to play

The game is located here.  Try a sample game by entering two player names just to see how it works.  The directions are explained as the game progresses.

You can teach students how to play by demonstrating a two-player game at the front of the class.  Alternatively students can just get in groups as described below and play a couple practice games before they play the one that they will write about.

The activity

Have students sit in groups of three or four.  If they have laptops or netbooks, they will pass them around the group as they play the game.  If they are seated at computers, they will move from one computer to another as they take their turns.

Each student will go to the game's page. The game will load on that page.

Each student should enter his or her first name (or initials) as the Boss for the game that he or she is starting.  Then the student will enter the other group members' names as the additional players.  It helps if they list the students in clockwise order around the group, but it's not required as long as they include all other group members.

From there, the students can play the game.  It will direct them as to who the active player is (the Boss always goes first) and at that time the computer can be passed to that student or the student can sit at the computer.

Keep in mind that in a group of four students, for example, each student will be involved in four games.  Each student will be the Boss in one of those games. 

Important rules and steps:

• Students should not discuss the items or their rankings as they play.  
• Students may not observe another student's computer when items are being ranked.  This is especially important when the Bosses rank the items.
• When the game is over the Results page will appear.  Do not click Next on that page until a screen capture has been made.  See below.
• When the game ends, all students can look at the results and discuss who won.  Eventually the student who was the Boss for that game (computer) needs to be at that computer for the written part of the activity.

The writing assignment

Display these steps for the assignment or print this pdf version.

1)  Grab a screen capture of the Results page for the game in which you were the Boss.

On a Windows system you can do this by simply pressing the Print Screen key (usually located in the upper right of the keyboard).  On a Mac, press  Command-Control-Shift-3. That puts a copy of the screen in the clipboard.

2)  Paste the screen capture into the document file you're writing your assignment in.  Use ctrl-v on a Windows system or command-v on a Mac to paste the image of your screen.  You can change the size or crop it to make it easier to see the results of the game.

(If you forget to take a screen capture before you click the Next button your group will have to play the game again.  Please capture and paste that screen as soon as possible after the game ends so you don't lose the information!

3)  Now write a few paragraphs about the game you played.  In those paragraphs, address the questions below.  Your writing should flow like a written summary, not a list of answers.  You can address these in any order you like as long as all answers are apparent in your writing.

• List the items you had to rank in your game in the order you chose to rank them.  Briefly explain why you chose the order that you did.
• Were some items harder to rank than others?  Explain.
• Look at the rankings that the other students in your group chose.  Pick the student's ranking that had the highest score (as long as it wasn't a perfect match worth 10 points).  Explain how that student's ranking differed from yours.
• Imagine you had to convince that person that your ranking was correct or most accurate.  What would you say to change his or her mind?  What do you think that student would say to make you think his or her ranking was best?  
• If any rankings in your group stand out as particularly surprising, describe them.
• As you were playing or after reflecting on the game, what are two things you learned or hadn't thought of before?

See this blog post which contains several free classroom activities and insights based on the What's It to Ya? (Oh, Really!) game.  Depending on your subject or the purpose of the lesson you might use those thoughts to change the list of questions above to meet your needs.