#gamebased learning

[gamebased]

Playing to learn: Screenshots from our sessions of play. The Portal team are working on designs with a different approach to the testchambers. Can they create a new game within the game?

The Minecraft team have been playing "Survival Island - Stranded". They have been analyzing their play, and working out how to optimize their gameplay through experiments, calculation and visualization. The aim is to adjust this map so it can be used for teaching maths.

[gamebased]

Playing to design a (learning) game

Today we had our kickoff session of this semesters game project. The objective will be for students in groups to design a game that can be used in maths lessons. We have underlined that the focus be on creating an exciting gameplay rather than simply organizing curriculum content into a game experience. What we wish to challenge students to do is, create gameplay where it is necessary to apply mathematical- and logical thinking in order to master the game.

We started our day with a discussion about the relation between learning and playing. For some, the connection was obvious and as one student pointed out:

-“I’ve learnt best when I’ve been having fun.”

 Our students at IT-Kom are definately good examples of the learning that has taken place in gaming. So from this perspective they are perfectly equipped to know what makes a good game.

The phase we are in at the moment is the idea phase, where we do research and plan the actual game. The days’ activity was for students to document where mathematical thinking was involved in mastery of a game. We sent them off to play their games and bring in screenshots of situations that depicted maths in the game. Afterwards we met and looked at the pictures, and each student explained which math skills were being trained in the game.

We came across titles like Borderlands 2, Arma3,  Plants vs Zombies, Planetside 2, Starforge and Kerbal Space Program.

Todays session helped get students on track as to becoming aware that they in fact where applying mathematical thought when gaming. We hope that this combined with their vast knowledge of games will let them generate some fresh ideas for gaming with a learning perpective.

Day 2

Today we revealed which platforms we would be working on - The Portal2 puzzlemaker and Minecraft. Students decided which they preferred to work with, and this determined the groups they would work in.

Our aim is that the students in groups create the game concepts, and from here develop their ideas, in smaller constellations and alone. We have a scrum meeting twice daily, where we evaluate the progress and adjust and set goals accordingly.

Our goals with group formation is not only letting students utilize each others skills, but to let them develop personal and social skills in a meaningful context. Before letting students into group work they are equipped with different models of conversation, which allow each student to contribute what they think . Afterwards they need to negotiate opinions and come to agreement on a final decision.

Day 3:  Game analysis

Today we focused on uncovering how gameplay in Minecraft and Portal involves mathematical thinking.

I asked the Minecraft team to start a survival game on our server map. They were to plan and build a minecraft community, where players were assigned certain roles. I appointed one student to be admin and gamemaster. After doing this, I walked out to meet with the Portal team.

I asked the Portal team to design a test chamber which mainly focused on using lasers and all related assets. The point was not to create a complex chamber, but to experiment and exaggerate the use of lasers.

Before finishing off I asked students to take screenshots of their work for later assessment. To conclude the days session, we took a look at what thet had worked on. What I wanted to uncover here, was how many of their decisions while playing, were infact based on mathematical thought.

In Minecraft we looked at houses from a geometrical perspective, discussing symmetry, angles, area and volume. We also discussed the optimal design of a field and how effectivity in the designs could be measured.

In Portal we observed the geometry of lines, area and the volume of chambers.

I still feel most challenged by working in Portal puzzlemaker, since it sets a lot of boundaries at to what is possible. This might become an advantage though, but its hard to say yet. Minecraft, on the other hand is totally open - here the challenge will be to create a sharp concept that doesn’t get carried away in endless possibilities.

[digibett-blog]

Kuato-refleksioner

Spilfirmaet Kuato er efter min mening som så mange andre spil af edutainment tilsnit fanget imellem at være kommerciel sælgende og læringsmæssigt forsvarligt. Der blev bestemt gjort meget for at koble de to igangværende spil til en læringskontekst komplet med test i skoleregi etc. Men det handler stadig om at få eleverne til at købe app’en, ikke skolerne. Indtil videre er spillene iOS baserede, de er designmæssigt voldsomt leks! Gameplays lyder også relevante og engagerende. Lige nu er det første spil klar “Hakitzu”, få din modstanders robot gjort ukampdygtigt ved at pille ved dens javascript! Digital literacy - indblik i programmeringssprog har virkelig været et tema på denne tur (se understående). Det andet spil skulle ramme appstore sidst i marts og hedder indtil videre Axis, gameplay temlig langhåret med rumskib med teenageravatar (kun mulighed for pige 14 år - hvem sagde Lara Croft?) styrter ned på fremmedplanet, hvor rumskibet projicerer flere verdener (perioder i jordens historie) ud som avataren skal udforske og løse opgaver i. Det kræver, at man få lov til at lege lidt i spillet for at forstå det bedre, tror jeg, men det kan også lade sig gøre, for vi får begge spil på prøve ;) (Lism)

[digibett-blog]

Anbefalet af Ollie B (Lise)

[gamebased]

Level design in MinecraftEdu - week 6, Final touches

Tuesday 27.3

Today was the last day to do final editing and tweaking. In our startup chat I emphasized the days focus - final detailing and playability. Students were focused and surprisingly good at getting to work and following up on loose ends I tested some quests and found that there were still many obvious flaws making them still unplayable. I think the test phase needs to be emphasized in future projects like this. Some of the building had needed firmer guidance at a much earlier stage. Some puzzles became too time consuming and difficult and needed a clear path to be followed. Some of these puzzles might have been more playable if I had supplied students with a workflow structure that would help them build more systematically. Maybe a good pre-project exercise here could be simply building puzzles with focus on challenge vs rewards and flow.

Wednesday 28.3

Today we focused on absolute final tweaks and documentation with videos and screenshots. Again there was an eagerness to perfect their work - a real "just one more block" - kind of spirit. Before we started I made an effort to explicitly explain the order of the assignments they had to complete, and knowing my students I knew I'd have to follow it up. As suspected, they didn’t quite follow through on what I told them, and I had to do a round reminding them what was agreed on. These assignments were particularly important for me since it was saving their final versions and creating screenshots and video to document their work for the presentation. We delivered an intense presentation of our workform as well as our products. We had our principal come up as our special guest - I hope we assured him that learning with games is a method with serious perspectives. Final Thoughts Reflecting on the project as a whole, the theme of chaos vs control seems to underly many of my issues. I would tend to having more control, not to restrict - but more to create clearer stuctures, hereby allowing freedom within these boundaries. Our workform has been project- based and requires constant reevaluation and adjusting, something that doesn’t fall easy to our group of students. So I think well defined boundaries and phases of work would increase productivity and ultimately give creativity better grounds to unfold in.

[gamebased]

Some weeks ago some of my students started this pixelart project by themselves. Whats interesting about it is that these are students(with aspergers) who often need clear instructions when working on more complex processes. Here they had a goal and planned the whole production from beginning to end. The recording consisted of almost 500 stills, and the actual building took approximately 1hour

[gamebased]

Here's some recordings from my Minecraft english lessons showing the students writing english to each other.

I haven't explored this method of working with written english that much yet - but seeing this group of students happily writing english indicates that in an environment like Minecraft, students are more motivated to write in a second language. 

[gamebased]

Minecraft English session 4 & 5

Until now I have continued letting my students play a minecraft survival game. Most important here is still letting the students speak english to each other while playing. At the beginning of the 4th session I was happy to notice that students automatically started speaking english once they logged on to the server. Whats more is that most of them also used english when writing in the ingame chat.

For this session I had planned a period of 5 minutes of verbal silence to see if this would encourage them to write some english. Some found this unnatural because talking out loud to each other was a part of what made this experience meaningful to them. Nevertheless silence did cause some to write some more and the more I joined in, the more they would respond. In retrospect I think this experiment was too staged and caused more disruption to the flow of the game. I think a better alternative will be simply beginning to write with the students - something that will engage them; a quest for a hidden food supply maybe...?

One thing I also noticed about the period of silence, was that there was an intense common focus on the info being shared through the chat. This shows me that even if they're not writing they are definately reading whats being written.

At the beginning of the 5th session I took a brief evaluation of the gameplay with the class. I suggested two ways we could expand on the game and we ended up deciding to split the class into two teams to create some more competition. I don't know where this will bring us, but we'll see soon.