7 Things You May Not Need to Know About Me

I was tagged by Julie Squires, in the 7 Things meme.  This is the first meme I’ve been tagged in (just like Julie), hopefully it will jump start my blogging again, which has been slack since starting my new job back in August.  It has been very enjoyable to read all the things I don’t need to know about all of my PLN members!

7 Things:

• Education is my second career.  At this point I can say it is the one I was truly meant for.  Both of my parents were teachers, so being a bit rebellious, education was not something I even wanted to consider.  I went off to college and majored in Environmental Health.  After graduating I worked as Quality Control in a few different places. I did quality control for a food manufacturer, testing salad dressings and pickles.  I also worked quality control in a radio-pharmaceutical company that made sodium iodide capsules for thyroid imaging.
• I love History.  I wanted to major in History when I went to college, but my parents told me if I did that, about the only thing I could do was become a teacher. (see above)
• I began my teaching career as a Biology teacher.  And because of my experience in industry in the late 80s, when computers began arriving at schools in the early 90s I had experience with them, and ended up teaching Computer Science 1/2 of the day and acting as Network Administrator the other 1/2.
• I met my husband online.  Yes, a little unorthodox for some, but it worked for me.  He was the first one who could answer my challenge to name 3 movies with Mark Knopfler soundtracks.  Can you?
• I have been a Scottish Highland Dancer since I was 7. Most of my peers played some sort of sport, my dad had us in Highland Dance as our sport.  Because of this I’ve been involved with the Colorado St. Andrew Society and Rocky Mountain Highland Dancers for many years.  So, yes, I like bagpipes!  
• When I met my husband to be, I had already planned my dream summer.  Since changing careers I longed to spend a summer in Europe, the planets had finally aligned, and that summer was planned! Then I met my future husband, and marriage was discussed.  Because he is such a wonderful person, he joined me for part of that summer, and we were married in Scotland, at the Bunchrew House/Hotel.  Yes, he even wore a kilt, and a there is an online photo. I stayed for my planned holiday, and he returned to work.
• In 2006 I was an exchange teacher in Melbourne, Australia.  Okay, so some of you knew this, but it is such an important piece of who I am now, it must be mentioned.   

So, there you have it.  7 things you don’t really need to know about me.  So many in my PLN have already been tagged with this meme, that it is difficult to find someone to pass this on too.  I’d like to tag Marie Coleman to participate in this meme, and while she hasn’t been as active on Plurk lately I still consider a very important part of my PLN, I would also like to tag Donna Hebert.

Final TGI Post

Well today is the last day of 4 weeks at University of Denver.  It has been a great professional development experience, even though the last week has been tough (simply because it is the last week).

For the last two weeks we were challenged to create game about the political environment here in the US.  My group chose to make a game about the 270 Electoral Votes needed to win the election.  A couple of things to note about our game.  When you open it up and look at the map (game board) you’ll notice the states are not all sized to the same scale.  Our group made a design decision to scale up those states with more electoral votes, and downsize those with fewer electoral votes.  We also used the 270 to Win website for a lot of our research. From this site we gathered lots of information regarding past voting in each state for the last 10 presidential elections, as well as what the current leanings of the state are.

I’ve posted  a zipped version of our game here, http://www.p4games.org/node/699 .  You will need to have Greenfoot downloaded and installed on your computer to run the game.  Also on the DU-Blog post above I also tried an export to HTML from Greenfoot.  At this time I’m on a lab computer and can’t make changes, so I’m unable to troubleshoot why that export isn’t working.

I spent a fair amount of time the last two weeks working on curriculum for a semester class in game development.  I’m still not done with this project, but here is a link to what I’ve got so far.  At this point I’m to week 12 in an 18 week semester.  My thought was to plan 16 – 17 weeks.  This would leave room for adjustment during the semester, and allow for missed days such as Pep Assembly days, etc.  Also at this point (Week 12) my plan is to move into a major project, and have the students develop a Humane Game that will require research and most of their class time for the remainder of the semester.

If you’re interested in this program, please feel free to ask me questions, or check out the University of Denver, Teacher Game Institute web pages, off of this page you can link to examples used during the Teacher portion of the program, and if you follow the links to Game Camp, you’ll see all the great things they did with the 9th and 10th grade girls who participated.  If you have a chance to participate I encourage you to do so.  The team here at DU has been fantastic.  My niece, who was a Game Camp participant, has informed me it was great fun.

This morning, Collen McCreary from EA games, will be in to speak to the girls about all of the different careers available in the game industry.  I’m really looking forward to this talk too!  It should be a good close to this program.

I am now looking forward to about 2.5 weeks of holiday until I report back on August 6 or 7.  I’m still not certain I’ve got a new position, although I’ve been told to hang in there, they are still waiting on the paperwork from the US Department of Education….so I am trying to be patient, and wait!

Teacher Game Institute – Week 3

Well, we’re into day 4 of our 3rd week here at TGI.  This week 30 or so 9-10 grade girls arrived for Game Camp.  They will be here through the end of next week, just like we are.

Teachers this week and next are working on a couple of things, 1 – we’ve been challenged to make a game about the upcoming presidential election and 2 – develop curriculum.  The teachers have broken into groups, during the first two weeks we were pushed to do all phases of the game development on our own, because they wanted us to exerience what our students would experience, this week we decided to cooperate and divide into groups that used all of our best skills.

My group is making a game about the 270 electoral votes needed to win the election.  There are three of us working on this game, two computer science teachers, and an art teacher.

I’ve also spent a fair amount of my time this week developing curriculum for a semester course in game development.  Liz B. Davis saw this the other day and plurked that she was so inspired by my blog on TGI, that she wanted to do this.  I’m honored that what I wrote inspired Liz!  It was interesting to watch the conversation that followed on plurk.  Many people missed the point of why this program at DU is so great!  It is not the technology that drives this program, the technology is only a tool!  This program also takes a holistic approach to game development, most that I’ve seen before concentrate on programming – the technology.

I will continue to work on this semester plan, my hope is that it will be written, and enough resources provided that someone who was not at TGI would still be able to use this curriculum.  And if I’ve set this document up correctly in Google Docs, it will re-publish as I update the file.

Teacher Game Institute – Continued Thoughts

This week, we’ve moved into more of a workshop mode. We had most of each day to work on producing our game. I have to say this has made me realize what a lousy programmer I am! I honestly don’t process information the way I need to, in order to be a good programmer. I know this is odd, since I’ve taught Computer Science for several years. Being able to acknowledge this I think takes me out of the competitive zone, programming teachers can get into. I’m admitting from the start, I’m not on their level, so I don’t have to prove myself with the code I write. Just going on here, probably more than needed because of some of the egos participating at TGI…..I’ll let it go now.

I do appreciate the holistic approach that DU has given us for game development. That piece is really what I’ve been looking for. This process incorporates math, writing, reading, art and programming, as well as some basic computer skills.

Over the next two weeks, while the 9th and 10th grade girls are here for Game Camp, we are to develop some curriculum for our classes, using what we’ve learned here.  For me chances are good I will not be returning to the classroom in August, and that I will be joining the Department of Online Education. I hope to translate what I’ve learned here into an online course for teachers on teaching game development, and using a more holistic approach.  To me this seems a better use of my time and approach.  However, I would admit I’m torn.

Today we also had to complete an evaluation of the Assessment Rubric, they’ve created here at DU for game development.  Here’s a link (hope it works) to the  TGI  Assessment  Rubric.  This rubric is very comprehensive, and sets out just what you could do with game development in your classroom.

Day 7 – DU – Teacher Game Institute

We began the morning with a programming session. Most of it was demonstration, we didn’t have a great deal of time to work on any code. The bulk of my day was spent working on graphics for the game we need to complete by Thursday.

I’m going with my Swiss Chocolate game, Rafael has told us there should be joy in game play. I think there is some joy in collecting chocolate! The player will be a tourist, and I drew my own today – I decided to go for comic, not good. I plan on working to animate is legs – so he will be animated, but it will hopefully be minimal programming. I also got my goat drawn, the goat will have patrolling characteristics, and then possibly will ‘heat seek’ when within a certain range of the tourist.

I haven’t decided exactly what will happen to the Chocolate or the Tourist, if the goat runs into them. I would like to have the tourist lose chocolate, instead of the game ending.