On the evening of the first day of Games Based Learning 2010, I attended Teachmeet Game On and spoke a little about using the Lego Wedo Sensors with Scratch in relation to pupils designing and creating purpose built input devices for Scratch games.

However, the nost impressive presentation by far was by 15 yeqr old student @EdithTheGeedith, telling us how most pupils experience games in their learning. Talk about hitting the nail on the head!

Other presentations from the Teachmeet can be viewed here - well worth a look!

I was lucky enough to attend the Game Based Learning 10 conference at the Brewery in London and was inspired by so many wonderful speakers and met a number of fellow twitterers in real life.  I was down there as part of the Consolarium from Learning and Teaching Scotland, and along with Derek Robertson, Ollie Bray and Brian McLaren.

I gave a short presentation on the work Charlie Love and I are doing in the Consolarium in relation to Scottish education and Games Design.  Here are the slides from that presentation.

Your feedback is appreciated!

Very Quick Post!

Just discovered that Scratch has the ability to handle text!  I mat be a little behind the times on this one, but what a great potential this has to engage and motivate pupils studying Standard Grade and / or Int 2 Computing. Using a combination of the ask and answer blocks in sensing and appropriate variables, I’m positive pupils would be able to carry out the majority of coursework tasks in this freindly environment.

I have always enjoyed using Scratch in the classroom when we begin to teach programming, but the pupils were often put off when we moved from Scratch to the Xcode environment – and who can blame them?

I just recorded a very quick, not quite up to Avatar standards,   screen cast to show how Scratch can take in keyboard input and process it in a very Standard Grade Computing way.

To begin with, take a few seconds to look at the silouttes below.

Recognise any of them?  Of course you do – they are the central characters in some very successful computer games.

I spent some time earlier this week with David from Denki, discussing the process of games design and we got onto the topic of characters in computer games.  We talked about how important the lead character in a game is and how it relates to the success of game.

When we think about ‘character’ we often think about the characters personality, characteristics and their personal history/background.  In the context of creating a computer game in school, it seems like the ideal opportunity to investigate character in an English class.  After discussion and writing a charcters background, they should be able to use it to influence how the character should look.  Which brings me on to my main point.

The look of a character should reflect their persona, however, the character itself should be easily idenifyable.  Hence the silouettes at the top of the post.  When creating an easily recognisible character, you are possibly creating a worldwide marketing tool.  How many lunchboxes, wallpapers, mugs, birthday cakes, hats, trainers etc are branded with an iconic computer game character?  There is a great post by Aldric Chan here that discusses the importance of character further.

Just off the top of my head, I see great potential for embedding game design, in particular, character design into the Curriculum for Excellence eg…

• Write characters in English
• Explore their characters further in Drama
• Create distinctive character designs in Art, even model using clay?
• Use tools like Scratch to build thir own games
• Use their characters in other areas of the curriculum eg
  • Create character objects in CDT like keyrings
  • Create caps/tshirt etc  HE
• Advertise and market their games in Business Studies

I am really keen to expore the area of characters in computer games further and will be working on a some resources for this at the Consolarium.

It would be great to hear from anyone who has used this idea in their school or any ideas people have about it.

I just stumbled upon www.tutpup.com.  It looks like a great, competition and rewards based resource for maths and spelling.  Really suited to the primary school.  Tutpup is affiliated to the adopt-a-monster social networking  come edugaming site MoshiMonsters.

With TutPup, teachers can join for free and set up a class code.  Pupils can then be given that class code and use it to join.  Pupils do not sign in with their names, they choose an animal, colour and number and that becomes their TutPup ID.  For example, I am RedOwl11434.  Below is a creenshot of the my home page.

When a pupil joins a class you create, you can watch their progress as they compete in competition with other pupils from all over the world in Maths, Algebra, Times Tables and Spelling games.  Pupils graduate from each level by correctly answering 10 questions in 3 different games.  Pupils can try their best to get onto the Wall of Fame, win awards for winning game and keep a record of their wins.

The screenshot above shows me playing against someone from the USA in a Maths Mix game.

I would love to hear from anyone who is using this resource just now, or if anyone intends to use it with their classes.

LTS in conjunction with 4ip worked with SixToStart to create and pilot an iPhone/iTouch App called TapTale. TapTale’s primary goal is to promote literacy through the reading and writing of tales using the tap, tilt, shake and swipe functions of Apples touch screen devices.

When creating a tale, pupils are asked to write chapters using the touchscreen keyboard on the device. In order to progress from chapter to chapter, the reader must use one of the tap, swipe, tilt or shake sequences. It is up to the author of the tale to decide what action must be taken for the reader to see the next chapter.

Once a tale has been created, users can upload them via the device to the taptale website. This allows other registered user to download and read their tales directly on the device. Registered users can provide feedback on any tale via the website using a ‘fridge magnet’ style form. Anyone can read the tales created directly from the site, but of course the tapping and tilting functions are not possible in this view.

This App looks really promising. I really like the idea of pupils incorporating the device’s actions in their tales. For example, each chapter could provide clues to what action is expected for the reader to progress.

Chapter : “… Anum waved goodbye to John …”
Expected Action – Shake
Chapter: “… heard a knock at the door …”
Expected Action – Double tap

Encouraging pupils to read and write, provide and receive feedback using interactive and relevant technology should not only improve literacy skills but digital literacy skills.
Needless to say, I am delighted to be involved with the forthcoming pilot and am looking forward to seeing the impact it has.

I just stumbled over this WordPress Plugin – WPtouch from Brave New Code.  It’s great!  It optimises your WP for viewing on iPhone/Android/Pre devices.  Here’s a wee blurb from their site.

WPtouch automatically transforms your WordPress blog into a web-application experience when viewed from an iPhone, iPod touch or Android touch mobile device. It comes complete with all the standard WordPress blog features: search, login, categories, tags, archives, photos & more. WPtouch also offers many customization features through a beautifully designed WordPress admin panel.

Here a few screen shots of start|select|pause from the iPhone.  The first one is the home page, the second is a typical blog post.

A lot has changed for me in the past few months.  Mostly due to starting my secondment with LTS as a Development Officer for the Consolarium.  Since the end of November, I have been inspired by so many people working in LTS and in schools across the country.  It’s  a great time for Games Based Learning in Scottish Education and now that I feel a little more settled in my new position (it’s very weird not having the school bell rule your life!), I have been reflecting on my first 4 weeks and started thinking about some forthcoming projects I’ll be working on. I intend to  blog regularly about each of them.  My main focus in the first quarter of the year will be on …

Games Design in Education

With my colleague Charlie Love, we are planning on taking a number of Games Design tools and creating resources for them for use in schools.  In particular, we will be focussing on Scratch – that much loved free MIT application.  Via GLOW, we will be delivering a number of tutorial videos on how Scratch can be used to develop computer games.  There will be a particular focus on the design phase.  Computer game development offers a number of opportunities for pupils to engage with the experiences and outcomes of CfE across the curriculum.  You can see some of my initial thoughts below.

 Games Design Initial Thoughts PDF here.

Of course Scratch is not the only game design tool.  We will also be working with a number of other tools including, but not limited to….

• Kodu - Creating games for the XBox
• 2DIY - Award winning software developers 2Simple’s great tool for building games
• Greenfoot - Build computer games in Java – can be used with very little knowledge of programming, but also can be used to teach object oriented programming
• GameMaker - Ever popular game creation tool
• Neverwinter Nights and Adventure Author - Dr Judy Robertson and her team at Heriot Watt really bring games design into the curriculum with this
• Warsow/GTKRadiant - Open source and cross platform 3D game creation tools, as recommended and used by Charlie Love at Cults Academy

Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality has been getting a lot of press recently.  I am fortunate enough to be looking after the Consolarium pilot of Second Sight with the PSP.  We are hoping to use this tool initially in a primary school setting.

iPod Touch / iPhone

It seems that any app you can think of is available for the iPhone and iTouch.  Do a search of the App Store for education apps and there are hundreds of them – many of the free.  I will be looking at how this device and a selection of apps can be used to enhance learning.

Manga High

I have discussed this in a previous blog post on the Consolarium blog.  Brian McLaren and I will will continues to work with the BlueDuck team to further our pilot of this fantastic Maths program.

Consolarium Podcast

As part of the Consolarium team, we will be delivering a bi-weekly podcast about our work here at LTS.  The first one was great fun to record, and can found here.  Why not subscribe and get all the news from Derek, Ollie, Brian, Charlie and myself about what we are up to with Games Based Learning?

While on the train journey back from London, I took advantage of the free Wifi service, courtesy of East Coast Rail and I decided to have a quick look at Stribe. Stribe could be the answer to the ‘should we allow or not allow access to Facebook et al in schools’ question.

Stribe offers individuals, or in our case, schools, to create a social networking site with all the tools you would expect to find. Including user created profiles, chat/private messaging and sharing pages. Your social networking site can then be accessed via any domain(s) you see fit. To get Stribe, you need to request a beta invite and answer 2 short questions. You can do that here.

As I see it, this could offer great opportunities for schools to create their own social networks and provide appropriate social netiquette, safety and privacy awareness. Not to mention the obvious social aspects of it – clubs, departments, teachers, classes can all create and contribute towards school pages.

I’m quite keen to give it a go and host a social network on the blog, however, the free wifi service doesn’t seem to let me do it at the moment! It’ll be a job for 2010!

Please let us know if any of you have used Stribe and share your experiences with us!

You can follow the Stribe team on twitter on @stribe

VoiceThread: Building Collaborative, Community Oriented Learning Environments from Michelle Pacansky-Brock on Vimeo.

I found this interesting watching this morning. Its quite long, but shows the power of VoiceThread as a tool for online learning and collaboration.

The VoiceThread blog makes interesting reading too, with details of ipod exporting, effects on learning, embedding into VLEs and their work with the New Yoir Public Library.  Again, if anyone has used VoiceThread in their classrooms, please share your experiences here.