I’m ready to fail … but excited by the prospect

Reflections of the Festival of Learning 2012

My brain is hurting after 2 full days of mixing it with some of the best and most innovative teaching professionals around this weekend in Sydney.

It was with enormous excitement that we all sat down to the first keynote – Adam Elliot of Harvey Krumpet fame. He definitely set the tone of the event – fun, imagination and vision. Adam and other successful animators are people I am constantly talking to my students about when they are tackling a creative task and trying something new with technology – think big and follow your passions. I always have in the back of my mind that when I’m introducing my students to techniques such as animation and film-making that I might have a budding Adam Elliot somewhere in front of me. It was amazing to hear his story of his Oscar nomination and award – so inspiring!

It was then down to business…..with so much choice over the two days – it was a difficult decision about where to head to start my 2 day learning journey. The Everest Theatre space was a-buzz and filling up so I took up a front row seat for “There’s an app for that”. We were treated to a fabulous range of speakers presenting short bites packed full of great take-aways, practical tips and advice for going mobile. I’ve now got a bunch of new apps to investigate this week including: Demibooks Composer (interactive ebook creator) Haiku Deck, Scribble Press, Video Star, Sock Puppets, Photofunia and ibuild (app making software). It was reassuring also to see teachers recommending apps that I have already considered including Skitch, Creative book builder, Popplet, Explain everything, Educreations and iMovie. Greg Alchin’s insight into the assistive capabilities really did show the versatility of mobile devices for all.

Through the day I explored the PLANE website – building relationships with teachers met during the day, investigating the different tools and looking at the possibilities for further professional development once the festival was over.

The theme of risk-taking was addressed by Dr Sarah Howard in the closing keynote for the day. This concept is one PYP educators are familiar with and one that is particularly relevant as I now contemplate the road ahead with technology back at my school. This keynote was an omen of what I was to reflect on during Day 2.

Over the last few years I have been on safe ground with a familiar with a range of tools, comfortable with desktop and laptop computers, increasingly better internet connections and wifi, web 2.0 tools and their possibilities and our easing into working in social spaces. Day 2 proved to be the ‘game-changer’, literally. Opting to head downstairs into the basement spaces for “Permission to Play”, I was ready to be impressed and a little daunted by what I saw and heard about. We’ve dabbled in Kodu and I’ve talked with students and teachers on and off about the possibilities of Minecraft and we’ve created games using 2DIY (2simple software) – however I was blown away by the work being done by Lucas Gillespie with Portal 2 and other game platforms, Bronwyn Stuckey and Quest Atlantis and Kate Booth (pre-service teacher) who presented on Sim on a Stick. This will be where my spectacular failure will begin. Not being a native gamer, its time to muscle up, have some fun, fail dismally and see the possibilities for my students in the game space and the virtual world. I knew it was coming, I’m unprepared, but I’m excited and ready to fail in order to excite.

Game on! 

Dr Jason Fox's closing comments and wrap up gave me permission to feel daunted, suggested the space to think, reflect and dream and allowed us to feel good about what's ahead - all in a set of beautifully crafted conference doodles.

I’m feeling a bit the same as when I was first introduced to Web 2.0 at a conference in Singapore in 2006 – completely energized by the possibilities. So what will be my 4 priorities over the rest of this term and into 2013?

• ·      Bed down the productivity and creative apps we want in our initial ipad roll out
• ·      Investigate the possibilities of virtual worlds and quest based learning by signing up to a Quest Atlantis teacher training session and check out Sim on a Stick as a starter to working in VW’s and approach some teachers who might be willing to take a risk
• ·      Look seriously at Minecraft and Portal 2 and get a little practice in!
• ·      Move forward with my PLANE journey
• ·      Excite my teachers to coming along for the ride

A HUGE thank you to PLANE, the generous fellow teachers who presented, my twitter network who showed friendship during the 2 days and my new network buddies, I’m looking forward to following you in the future – it was a brilliant 2 days.

Gaming – playing and creating using 2DIY

Our kids are learning content increasingly through online computer games. It’s a fun way to learn with an added bonus of some of the better designed ones requiring problem solving and critical thinking skills. So its great when game making can be introduced as a skill – a problem solving and thinking task as a natural extension to playing games in the younger grades.
Firstly I like to start with a bit of a brainstorm – what makes a good game. Is it the content, the characters, the design, the challenge? We have a bit of a discussion which can get quite animated with many students very knowledgeable about the games they play.
Its time to then direct our attention to educational games, the point of them and how best to construct a situation where the game player can have fun and learn at the same time.
Queue 2DIY, part of the 2simple suite of software. It’s possible that they have played a 2DIY game in an earlier grade. Its something I sometimes prepare as a pre-test or a learning task – they are familiar with some of the formats too – the snake or maze game, multiple choice quizzes, cloze exercises, labelling diagrams etc.
Some ‘Sandbox’ time is then scheduled in a computer session where students investigate the videos and play the example games. The point is for them to identify the best games for learning. The session wraps up with a discussion focussed on their top suggestions for an educational game.
The understanding of the mechanics of some of the games now out of the way, the students turn their attention to writing a game proposal. Some criteria needs to be considered, the purpose of the game, the player age range, the type of game, the content of the game. At the bottom of the proposal page it is important for students to gather information that might be useful when they are making their game. I require students to find at least 10 pieces of information so they can kick-start the content and inform the background to their game.
I give feedback to each student on their proposal and then its time to start designing the games. The range and depth of creativity is obvious. Our topic this time is finite resources of the world with a particular focus on rainforests.
Some of the games created by students include:
* A snake game where the snake collects endangered trees.
* A catching game where points are scored for catching renewable resources and points deducted for catching finite resources
* A matching card game identifying endangered trees of the rainforest
* Lots of different labelling games including maps that identify the rainforest of the world
Time is also spent making sure the instructions for the game are clear and concise and timings, sounds and images are all appropriate to the design of the game.
Once the games are made its time to test them. Each student game maker then becomes the game reviewer, testing one game designed by a classmate. A rubric looks at the design, the content, the creativity and the appropriate age level.
Our students always cast a critical eye on their classmates work and come up with some great comments for each other. All the games are then put on our school portal and all our school community can have a go.
This task is filled with 21st century learning skills: creativity, communication and critical thinking as well as problem solving are successfully combined with real learning for a real (game playing) audience – they really understand their topics and can explain the purpose. The students are understandably proud of their creations and cant wait to play each other’s games.
This task was created for Year 4 students as part of their work in the PYP unit of inquiry 'Sharing the Planet'. Other game creation methods are investigated in other years including Scratch and we are soon introducing a similar free tool Stencyl.