SVC Game Dev Club – The Relaunch!

 

Well, its been a while since the last post (too much turkey, and the sudden onrush of January – poor excuses I know), so what has been going on? Well, I decided this week to relaunch the Soar Valley College Game Development Club, who’s numbers had dropped off at the end of the year. The good news is that the turnout was good for the first session (maybe thanks to the poster I created, good old Master Chief), and I now have a core group of over twenty students working towards making their first game in Game Maker.

The first session has been largely about creating sprites for their games, with a simple introduction to create a low resolution character from a photo image. Creating what I like to call a “GTA’ed” version of the character/face using Photoshop’s own filters formed the first part, followed by more hands-on editing using black outlines and the burn/dodge tool to add details. Especially successful was the use of the interactive whiteboard for working on an image, as the picture below demonstrates.

Google Docs in the Classroom

I’ve been using Google Documents with my students for some time. Yes, we have a managed learning environment which (should) allow students to access their documents from home, but Google Docs just does it really well. You can upload most types of documents, as well as convert them to Google’s own proprietary format (which doesn’t eat up your 1GB of free space). The sharing facilities also allow you to fully control who has access, and at what level. This coupled with the ability to create Office style documents, and them save them in the standard .doc, .ppt etc formats makes this a very useful tool for education. It’s not perfect. The decision to only allow full functionality to its own Google Chrome browser (other browsers do work, but with many of the bells and whistles missing) smacks of self promotion, plus sometimes the conversion tool can do some strange things to your documents! But, this seems to be improving. So, check out the video introduction and grab yourself 1GB of free storage!

Retro Gaming Weekend

I love new technology, but I also love old technology, especially old consoles and home computers. This weekend gave me the rare chance to indulge this passion, thanks to the Retro Computer Museum (www.retrocomputermuseum.co.uk). On show was a fantastic aray of consoles and home computers from the annals of history. There must have been over thirty working machines at the event. Even better than that every single one could be played with, some with multiple games to choose from. Retro geek heaven! Thanks to the guys from the Retro Computer Museum for what must have been a great effort to put on the event. Truly amazing!

Chatting to Andy Spencer from the Retro Computer Museum early in the new year they hope to offer visits to schools in a bid to help educate kids about the development of gaming and computing technology. Great for Gaming clubs, ICT and Product design.

Below is a (thrown together) video from the event. Enjoy!

Games Dev Club @ Soar Valley College

My last post highlighted the recent (November 17th) Changing the Game conference in Birmingham. A great event, and one which really showed the possibilities of using gaming as a means to inspire kids. Anyway, I thought I’d do a quick video showing the content I presented at the conference, highlighting my games development club at Soar Valley College. Its been a great success in a very short time, and will certainly feature in many of my future posts.

Games Based Learning

ok, so we need a new term. Games based learning just doesn’t quite explain what it’s all about. However, this video really explains well why we need to equip our students with the skills they need to work in the games and video effects industry. Take a peek, and show it to your students. Then start your own Games Making Club.

Changing the Game – 17th November

Well, its not often that as a teacher you can go on a days course or conference and get as much as I did out of Changing the Game (#ioctg).I can honestly say that every speaker gave me something to think about, something to investigate, or was just amazing! Two students from Hamble College kicked the event off, giving an insight into what the kids want to see in the classroom, and highlighted the lack of trained computer scientists in the education sector. Certainly true, my MA was in Product Design!

Ray Maguire and Andy Goff of iO gave some great insights into the potential of new technology to inspire learners. Check out Andy Goff on Twitter @AndyGoff.

Don Passey of Lancaster University couldn’t be with us on the day, but thanks to the wonders of Skype  managed to broadcast to the event. His presentation on research into the long and short-term gains from the use of technology in the classroom was very informative, and pointed in the direction of some great studies on the subject.

Dan Thomas of The Schools Network spoke about their commitment to supporting teachers in their use of new technology in the classroom, with some teachers in the know acting as ambassadors to other school. Sounds like a great idea to me, and would certainly help spread the word and good practise.

Kristian Still of Hamble College (@chrisleach78) presented some great work he’s been doing with his students using an amazing text-based adventure creator. Remember the likes of The warlock of Firetop Mountain from the 80’s? Well imagine the ability to create the same type of thing on a PC. Great for teaching literacy to students. Best thing is they wouldn’t even know they were learning. I’ll certainly be giving it a go. Watch this space! Alex Warren, the creator of Quest, demonstrated how easy it is to create an adventure at the conference, and you can see Quest for yourself at http://www.textadventures.co.uk/quest/

Tom Cole, a Science teacher and game design student went over some great resources for starting up a games design group in your school (look out for my next post of my game development group). Following this Alan O’Donohoe of Our Lady Catholic School (@teknoteacher) did a truly inspiring demonstration of using Scratch – http://scratch.mit.edu/ , creating a version of Pong on stage! Hats off to you Alan. It’s like celebrity master chef, but with software. I’ll certainly be giving that a try.

Finally, it was my turn up on stage (the graveyard shift). I did a quick presentation on my previous projects, as well as my recent successes with setting up a Games Development Club.  The group have produced some great designs for games, and while we didn’t manage to get into the finalists one group did just miss out of the top ten in eleventh place. Its had a wonderful response from the students, and I’ll be doing a post about the group in the very near future. Again, watch this space!

Last, but by no means least was Matthew Prodger of SecondSight fame (@secondsighted) who showed off their great AR technology (see my use of the technology in my AR section and below), as well as highlighting their new version for iOS devices.

A great conference all round, and some great contacts made and ideas shared.

Catchup on what I’ve been doing…

Right, well now the Blog is up and running I thought its a good idea to take some time out to go over some of the things I did last academic year with Augmented Reality in the classroom, as well as put down some thoughts on possible uses in the future.

 

The Solar System Lesson – Where it all began.

This is where it all began, with the creation of the solar system lesson. Using the Second Sight (http://www.mysecondsight.com/)software I had the brain wave of using AR to allow students to “wonder” through a virtual solar system. As they went they could listen and learn about the characteristics of each of the planets and moons. The video shows a group of year ten students using the experience on the Sony PSP’s I’d recently managed to get for the school. Only eight PSP’s and a little imagination to create the “wow” effect.

Tanya Byron on the Solar System Lesson

Taken from her key-note speech at the national SSAT conference. I love the fact that she calls the lesson “beautiful! That’s a first for me.

Sherlock Holmes anyone….?

Following the Solar System lesson I started chatting to an teacher friend of mine about how the same technology could be used in English. She commented that it looked like a “gimmick”, and she couldn’t see the benefit. She’s a great friend, and sometimes its good for people to remind me that not every lesson should be about technology. However, the gauntlet was thrown down and I challenged her to work with me on a lesson that would inspire the most reluctant of readers. Lucky for me she took up the challenge!

The resulting lesson can be seen below, and focuses on year eight students doing a bit of sleuthing of their own to decipher the clues discovered by Sherlock Holmes. Using AR they can walk through a virtual house, finding the clues that link to the murder!

For the future..

Well, that was last academic year, what’s in store for this year. Well, first of all we now have twelve iPads2’s, and twelve twelve iPods to play with. Along with the new version of Second Sight (http://www.mysecondsight.com/) the possible uses are endless, not to mention the increased screen realestate makes a lot of difference. I’ll update soon with new iPad versions of the above lessons, as well as uses in History and Science.

Keep watching!

Technology in the classroom?

Welcome to MarksTechnology, a site covering my exploits with technology in the classroom, in education, and well, anywhere! I’m always trying to use technology and software innovatively and imaginatively to inspire students and educators alike. On this blog I’ll be covering what I’m doing at the moment, as well as what other people are doing to push the boundries and excite learners.

Please take a look at the links to the right for more infomation on specific areas, as well as to find out a bit more about me. Failing that keep popping back to see whats going on. Feel free to comment and message me, and you can follow me on twitter #MarksTech.

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