The second round of computer is due on Friday. Students were allowed to partner with one other student to develop their games this time and the results are amazing.

Several groups went with more abstract concepts that have an engaging look and intriguing game play. One group is making a Galaga-Space Invaders cross-over game, while a couple of other groups are creating maze games.

Attached below you will find a zipped version of our group game. We were challenged to make a game about the political system here in the US. We chose to make a game about the 270 Electoral votes needed to win the election.

We did some research, and found on http://www.270towin.com a wealth of information regarding how states are leaning now, how they've voted in the past, and how many times they voted for the winner. All of this went into the algorithms we developed during game development.

Take a look at the curriculum I've been developing.

http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dr84rr8_22fvdxb9ht

Here are example scenarios for Game Camp 2008 that you may find useful.

Game0:  Not quite a game yet, move the Bee to get the flowers

Game1: An actual game, get the flowers before the time runs out.  Use class variable for numSoFar and numFlowers to determine if you have visited all the Flowers.  Win/lose conveyed to player via System.out.println.

Game2:  Same as game 1 but now the flower vibrate after then have been pollinated.  This is done with the getJumpDistance() and setJumpDistance() methods added to Flower.

Read my regular blog post at:
http://mhobkirk.wordpress.com/2008/07/02/teacher-game-institute-continue...

Before beginning my evaluation discussion on the Assessment Rubric, I'd like to revisit the conversation we had during one of the first pedagogy sessions.

The question asked was do we use rubrics. As I remember, most did, but there was one participant who argued against them vehemently. The example given by this person was that when grading with rubrics she found that those that really weren't good programs scored high, and those that were good programs scored low.

Here are some notes on accessibility in game design from Henry Jenkins and Eitan Glinert (one of his students). Glinert has written a thesis on designing games that are accessible to everyone, including those with disabilities. He shares two key ideas:

Create a simple game with one keyboard-controlled sprite and one object to capture.  The win condition is the player must move their sprite into the other object.  When the player hits the other object they win.  Make this game have a splash screen, a win screen, and a lose screen.  The transition between these screens is to be controlled by the world class variable "gameState" and the code to make the transitions should be found in the World's act( ) method.  See game7 for example code.

Here is a list of programming assignments.

•   GameState Step1. Goal: to learn how to write the code that drives game state changes.
• GameState Step2. Goal: to learn how to write the code that drives game state changes.
• Animation.  Goal: to learn how to support multiple levels with game states.

This has been a helpful metaphor for the act method during the class taught at Martin Luther King Jr. Early College. For example, instead of saying "in the act method, do this..." you would describe the act method as the heartbeat of the actor and consistently use the heartbeat metaphor throughout your instruction.

You can check my blog at
http://mhobkirk.wordpress.com for my experiences on Day 6, and a reflection on the week.

"Make a game about sad."

M

Noodling:  The exploratory and creative process of going back and forth between the media/game authoring environment,
paper design, sketches, and narrative desires.  In short: "doodling" with the "noodle" to see what works, what doesn't, what
one discovers as possibilities, what limitations one finds, and how to work around those limitations.

You can read my account of Day 5
http://mhobkirk.wordpress.com/2008/06/28/day-5-du-teacher-game-institute...

I do think I would explicity teach the process:
Design>Create>Play Test>Tune>Exhibit process. I know this process is not identical to, but I find it very similar to the SDLC (System Development Life Cycle). I think it would be good for students to understand what they are doing, and the process they're going through. Also it would be good lead in to Computer Science/Programming and then they could make the analogy to the SDLC.

Humane Games Presentation

What is your current thinking on the importance of enhancing creativity and developing innovative abilities in your students?

I think this is something that we should pursue. However, I think this is a little like teaching our students technology skills, it must be integrated, and be transparent. We can no longer teach "technology" classes. So anything to enhance creativity and innovative thinking must be done transparently and in the content and context of classes.

What is your current thinking on the roles of: