Day 6 – DU – Teacher Game Institute

Yes, it is Saturday, and we were all here at 8:30 am. We are attending today, because this is a 10 day program, and July 4, would be our last day. This way, we will finish on July 3.

Programming

We started the morning by using forLoops to write a word on the Greenfoot world, with a small image. I was able to write the word THE using 9 for Loops. I would like to go on and add the word END below it. This will require learning how to do a diagonal line, as well, as dealing with the D somehow.

Pixels

We were back in the computer lab today using the Wacom tablets…..these have got to be the coolest things. We did the perspective drawings from yesterday, using Inkscape, and we also tried the Molly Bang type drawings using Inkscape. While I might still use Fireworks in the classroom, because that software is available, and it has more tools, Inkscape will be a good solution for students who want to work at home, or have been absent, I will need to do a little experimenting to see if an exported .png file from Inkscape can be edited in Fireworks.

Pedagogy

We started the afternoon session with a brief discussion on the final chapter in the book. Then we watched a video of Dan Pink. I’d not seen this video before and found it very interesting. I particularly enjoyed is analogy that the MFA (Master of Fine Arts degree) is the new MBA (Master of Business Administration). I picked up from the video (as I’ve not read his book, that his competencies are what he sees as important for jobs that can’t be outsourced or automated. Then we blogged some discussion questions.

Play

We had 1/2 hour to develop our game about sad. I really struggled with this. Rafael knew I was struggling and gave me a deck of cards called “Grow a Game“. These were a big help although I still struggled. When it came time to present, I didn’t have anything I was willing to share. I listened to some of the others ideas (not everyone shared this round), and I think the issue was I felt my ideas were not formed well enough to share. In retrospect they probably were.

My idea for a game about sad, was an educational game about life at Port Arthur, Tasmania. At Port Arthur there was an island where they imprisoned young boys (you could be transported at age 8). I think this would be a board game, and the goal of the game would be to learn a skill (example: Stone Masonry) and earn your release from Port Arthur. However, bad things happened there, and you may not make it.

When you visit Port Arthur, you can get a card, with a name of a real convict on it, at the end you can find out what happened to that convict. My idea sort of grew out of this activity, it could tell the story of what happened in between.

Thoughts on the Week

When I got home tonight was very tired after 6 days at TGI. We started late (too a teacher!) but we finished late too. In some ways I felt I had no time to process what I was learning as the week progressed. However, given all that I’d still have to say this was one of the best weeks I’ve ever spent in professional development. The team at DU has kept the number of participants down, so we are a small group, and I think everyone feels safe sharing in the group. The program has gotten all of us out of our comfort zones on some level, and thinking what a great way this will be to teach students. In some ways I’m very disappointed I probably will not be returning to the classroom.

I believe that over the next four days we will be moving to more of a workshop type environment (not 4 sessions/classes per day). During this time we will need to develop a game by Thursday. I think I may go back to my Chocolate-Switzerland game for this…..although I’ve got until tomorrow morning to change my mind!

Day 5 – DU – Teacher Game Institute

Programming

I was in early to work on some errors I had in my code from yesterday. Problem solved. Need a background image for my timer. Each time the timer puts up a new number it was writing it over the old number. With a background it throws that up first, then writes the new number. Spent our time this morning using a forloop to create more than one bee on the game. And I corrected many errors….with help. In some ways the programming I’ve been doing for years, is starting to make sense, with a little formal training(doh!)

Pixels

Today was perspective day. We learned how to draw boxes above and below our eye level. We started with some basics in 2D. Even drawing a room that looked as if there was door at the far end of the room, and a road that went off into the distance between a row of trees, I got fancy and put a hill in mine! Then we went to the drawing horses, and drew boxes that were stacked. Will try to get a photo of my work posted. The point is, that again this was basic stuff. Stuff that I can remember, and teach to my class. I can see the importance of pulling the kids off of the computer and doing this.

Pedagogy

We watched the abbreviated version of “The Last Lecture” by Randy Pausch. Then went through some expanded points from his book, by the same title. I met Randy last summer in July, before he gave this lecture. I was sitting in the Computer Science lab at Carnegie Mellon at the Alice Summer Workshop, listening to Randy talk about the development of Alice. I decided to take a look at his web page, as I’d done with all of the other people involved in the workshop. I discovered on his website, that Randy had pancreatic cancer, and had been fighting it. From that moment on, I’ve had a great respect for Randy, because he came in to talk to us about Alice, not about his cancer! When I saw “The Last Lecture” just a few weeks later, it was very difficult to watch, yet inspiring. I had some of the same emotions yesterday. But the abbreviated version, is not near as good or moving as the entire lecture (It is worth the watch). We discussed Chapter 5 in our text book, and then answered some journal questions. I am going to complete these later….I don’t think I did them justice in class…..I need to ponder for longer than 20 minutes, to answer these.

Play

Today in play we looked at some games that are probably quite controversial, and some were disturbing. I’ll try to get the links in here, but know ahead of time some of these deal with very controversial topics. Rafael was trying to get us set up for thinking about Humane Games.

We started out with a game titled September 12th, the author doesn’t refer to this as a game, but as a toy, because its not win able. I just don’t even know if I can begin to describe this game…Another game at the same location was titled, Madrid. This game is a little easier to describe.  The image was several people wearing t-shirts that said I Love _______ (here you could fill in the blank of any city where terrorist actions have happened).  Each person is holding a candle, the player must go around and click on the candles to keep the candles burning bright.  This game was very thought provoking, and we had some good discussion in class regarding all of the symbolism.

After that we took a look at the Free Rice game.  I had seen this game before, as my sister-in-law plays it.  The next game was Darfur is Dying, This was actually a fairly disturbing game.  You’re given a family unit (parent and six children) and your first task is to forage for water.  We tried choosing the father, but the game told us that adult males don’t forage for water, so we had to choose another family member.  We had the mother go and forage for water.  In the game she must run across the desert to get the water, and avoid the military patrols.  She was captured.  So when we were given our next task, we no longer had the mother as part of our family unit.

Our assignment was to think of a game that had to do with sad.  So I gave this some thought after class.  I have a couple of ideas, but I’m not sure how they will work.  Are they too controversial, or too close to home?  I’ve got some more time today to continue thinking about this.

Day 4 – DU – Teacher Game Institute

Programming

We started the day by taking a look at collision detections in Greenfoot. I have now got my flower to moving using the arrow keys, and my bee still moves about randomly. When they intersect, the bee disappears, as the flower is now a poisonous flower.

We finished the morning session by working with a timer. I’ve got the code in, but I’m still working on some errors. Hopefully it will easy to get it going tomorrow.

Pixels

We started with an introduction/review of Color Theory. While I’m familiar with some, I’m not as versed as the art teachers, and some of the programmers were less experienced than myself. Susan, talked about a book “Picture This: How Pictures Work” by Molly Bang. She really recommended this book as a good book to use to discuss shapes and colors for animations and web pages. The book discusses how to use minimal color and shapes for maximum effect.  We did one of the exercises out of this book. We were to work independently within a group to make an image, by cutting out shapes only. The theme was – A bird or birds attacking a victim- we could only use 3 colors + white, and we had to agree on these colors in our group.

During the assignment we were to discuss certain questions about what we were trying to convey within our group. We were also to go through several iterations of what this image would be prior to actually gluing. I found this difficult. Once I had placed my pieces I was unwilling to make changes….however, in the end I did, and I did like the results.

Pedagogy

We began with some research details on female-male brain developments. Debra also discussed chapter 4 of our text. Then as an intro into Humane Game Prompts we watched a Nickelback video. The idea would be show this clip to your students to get them thinking about more humane game scenarios.  Then we were given a list of prompts for humane games (so we can get our students away from wanting to blow everything up!). And we were asked to write a few more on our blog. These will be posted on our individual blogs on the P4 server.

Play

We spent the first part of our play time finishing our design from yesterday.  I had to make some modifications to my instructions.  I had to have someone playing the role of the algorithms that would be written for a computer game.  And I need to work with the props I had.  So my goat became a Nun that could take away your chocolate.  The Nun could move in any direction, the player could only move horizontally or vertically. 

The blue flattened marbles represent chocolate, and are positioned in various cities/towns around Switzerland. During the Play Testing, I learned a couple of things: 

• I can allow the Nun to move in any direction, but really she should only move once for every two moves of the player. 
• It would also be good to have the Nun speed up or slow down in some areas. 
• Maybe have a zone around that player that might make the Nun key in on the player, and have something that might slow her down as well. 

Another great day of Game Development.  Looking forward to tomorrow.

Day 3 – DU – Teacher Game Institute

Morning Sessions – Programming and Pixels

Started out the morning in Programming. Today, I made my ladybug, move around the world, getting the height and width of the world as the boundaries. There wasn’t a lot more in this session today, we were waiting on other teachers to get the programming done.

Pixels – What a cool session this was today! Our human model was back. We all had huge Wacom tablets, and we had to draw our model, using the Wacom. We used Inkscape as the tool. I don’t think it would be possible to purchase the large tablets used here today, however the smaller tablets are affordable. KW the model held 4 positions for five minutes each. He was simulating a forward walk. Here’s a copy of my work, not too bad for a first attempt. Again, I think this is something I could do in my classroom, if I’m back at GM. Otherwise, I want to find a way to incorporate this into a possible online course for teachers in Jeffco. I had to be a little more coordinated to do this work today, as the computer faced away from the model.

Afternoon Sessions – Pedagogy & Play

In our Pedagogy sessions we’ve been discussing the book “How Computer Games Help Children Learn“, by David Williamson Shaffer. We’ve now discussed through chapter 3. It has been a fairly easy read, and I think a good read. Today in this session we were also asked to set up and post our first blog for the workshop. This was done by copying and pasting a long list of personal inventory items to our blog, and then answering them. We were given the option of making this blog post private, this means that only myself and the research team at DU will be able to read it.

In our Play session we “Play Tested” our games from the previous afternoon. My game “Ninja Barnyard” had a few adjustments to the rules. Seems I needed to be clear, on what skip turn meant – was it this turn or the next turn. The game could also have been better if I had taken the time to put some hazards on the spaces on the board. I had thought about this, but ran out of time, and didn’t do it as homework! At the end of the day we were given the next task/game development round. We were given the choice of a 1″ sq grid or a 1/2″ sq grid. We were given a die, and some glass and plastic tokens. We were told we didn’t have to use the tokens or we could use others. The constraint was this had to be a single-player game.

I first thought I would use the larger grid, as I would have few squares to deal with. I also struggled during this time, I didn’t pick up on the point that this game might be written/designed as a board game but would probably be taken to the computer. I thought about this as homework. I’ve got an idea in the works….having just returned from Switzerland, I think mine will be a Chocolate-Cheese game. I’ll have a map of Switzerland as the game board. Cows will appear at random cities, and remain there for a period of time, the player (I have not determined the sprite for the player) will need to make it to the cow before it disappears. The cow will randomly give the player a Chocolate or a Cheese….the goal will be to collect a certain number of chocolates in period of time. I think I could also put in a hazard…occasionally the cow could take away a chocolate.

To be continued after Day 4.

Day 2 – University of Denver – Teacher Game Institute

I’ve now completed two days of the DU – Teacher Game Institute (TGI). This has already been a great experience, and I’ve got another 1.5 weeks to go! This program is giving me exactly what I’ve been looking for in my quest to teach game development at the high school level. There will also be two weeks after that spent at the camp DU hosts for 9th & 10th grade girls.

Each day is divided into 4Ps – Programming, Pixels, Pedagogy, Play. I’ve already learned in the Pixel (art) part of my day, that I actually can draw! Yesterday we did some charcoal gesture and line drawings with a model. I left my drawings on the table, and came back after lunch, and thought they were someone else’s…..I couldn’t possibly have drawn that! I was so amazed. It wasn’t incredibly hard, and I think I could teach this small bit of art involved in game development to my students.  On day one in our Pixel session, we were given about 15-20 feet of wire, various pliers were made available, and we had to create a model of something from the wire.  The rule was it couldn’t be 2D, or something that could be hung on a wall like a cookie cutter.  We had to create a 3D object…..I was almost stumped from the word go, “What do I create?” “What if it doesn’t look right?” “What if I do it wrong?” I did get over these feelings, and just started creating.  I started with what I called a leg, soon that leg became 4 legs, then I was able to add a head.  At this point, I decided it was a turtle.  So I added an appropriate body.

The play portion of our day is also great fun. On the first day we played a card game, Fluxx. This was a difficult game for a lot of the AR type Computer Science teachers to play. The rules were constantly changing, as well as the goal. Having a 6 year old nephew, for me it was like playing a game with him! On the second day during our play time we completed two tasks. First we were given a sheet of paper, and told the following:

• You have 5 minutes to design this game
• It is a two-player game
• You must use a body part in the game
• There is only one rule for your game
• Give us one Goal (condition to win)

After our 5 minutes, we tested all the games designed. As you would guess some were better than others. I wish my nephew had been with me during this part of the day, he is always creating games….when did we lose that ability, I think all of the adults in the room were stumped at first, one participant didn’t even design anything (I think for fear of failure).

Our second task was the following:

• Two pieces of paper (1- for a playing board, 2 – to write down your rules)
• 1 dice
• 2 plastic tokens (I got a Ninja and a Pig, the teacher next to me got a Nun and a Dead Chicken)
• You have 20 minutes to design the following game
• A two-player game
• Play of the game must be able to be completed in 10 minutes.

Today we will test these games, I’ll scan in my gameboard, for my post tonight. In the programming portion of our first two days, we have been introduced to Greenfoot. This is a free IDE that uses Java. Our class is a mixed bag, some Computer Science teachers, but we’ve also got several Art teachers, and a Language Arts teacher. I haven’t actually programmed in so long, I would put myself in the group of non-programmers.

In the last two days we’ve also written some code that has a object in a world that moves left-right, and up-down. Scott (instructor) also taped a grid on the floor, and demonstrated how the java coordinates on a grid work. He had teachers in the class get up and stand in particular x-y coordinates. This worked well, and I think is a good thing to do with students. He also went over variables. He didn’t use the term “equals“, he used “gets“. So he labeled boxes, num1 num2 num3. Then he said num1 gets 7, and put a piece of paper with 7 written on it in the box.

Josh Fishburn – a graduate student working on the P4 Games project has a much better blog about the Play portion of our day.  He is able to sit back and observe, while I’m participating. 

More tonight on today’s program, and the pedagogy.