Preparation for the big nightComing back from Spring Break on April Fool's (no joke!) and then getting ready for the open house was going to be a rush, but I was confident that we could do it. After the break, I wanted to refresh the students in both the foundational game design and the basics of SCRATCH. We started with planning our games. I had found a new resources. The first was a helpful planning resource from the Teacher Pay Teacher site by Digital Divide and Conquer. The students began by embarking on a detailed planning session where they discussed and looked at historical games and watched a video of the first video game Students looked at video games that they liked to play, and then started to design characters, settings and levels for their games. using the resource pictured above, and when students had shown planning for two levels and could describe the goal of their game, how a player could "win", and how they planned to design the theme of their game they were ready to start programming in scratch.
The PBL approach was a success with the students, they started to understand how the games they design were part of a larger "genre" of game design. And we started to discuss elements of game theory - fair play, pursuit and evasion games, and what constitute winning. We also talked about whether at any given time they were "consumers" of games or if they were designers of games. We also talked about what would spark and hold interest of our intended audience. At first I was worried that this foundational focus would be frustrating for the students (and i think if I were to do this unit again next year, I would certainly start with this PBL unit before even getting any hands on a keyboard) however, the students really were content to revisit the planning area if it in their words, "would make my game better" Once the students got started on their games they referred to their planning sheets and were heard discussing with their table mates if they could change something to make it closer to their planning.
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April 2019
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