Update

As Civics Educators, we had our first Civics Call in with David and Rachel. It was a very informative session as we went over the upcoming changes in the Civic Globaloria Track requirements for the spring semester.

Student Motivation

Student motivation is at an all time low. It stems from the fact that school, overall, is not motivating. Traditional classes lack the ability to stimulate student interest and must be modified to meet the needs and learning style of today's students. Children today require constant stimulation, yet they also need to learn the basic skills to compete in the current global market. They go home and spend countless hours’ texting instead of talking on the telephone and lose precious personal interaction experiences which make them novice communicators; or play games for hours on end. Globaloria has put a spark back into some of the bright, but undirected students who fit the description above. I found the student to be engaged learners, who still do not want to dress up or present in front of the class, but will do it anyway, because they are proud of their accomplishments. Give the students tools to accomplish the tasks they love and the motivation becomes automatic.

New Year Progress

The new year has been filled with many new and exciting successes from the students at South Harrison High School. I thought my students were having an enormous amount of trouble; however, upon viewing their presentations and games I was pleasantly surprised by the sophistication and knowledge incorporated into the civic flash game theme.

It has been a while

In the development of most games students want to make complex games without understanding the difficulty of developing code for the games they design. As an educator, in a high school setting, I have noticed that students do not want to make games at a beginners level because they feel it is below their current station in life and school.

CIVICS TRACK

Students are more interested in code and making items move than to research and work on the civics track. I have put a prompt on their school blog as Rachel has suggested to make the students think more about the civics track. Students answer; i we are not finished with our games and that is why it is not civics oriented when I ask what category are you using, what does the player learn, and is the game fun for a civics oriented game.

Globaloria Visit

It was such a pleasure to have David Lowenstein, Rachel Rosenfelt, and Abby Taylor visit our school. We were able to preview the beginnings of the students games, for the guests. The team visitors had good constructive suggestion for the students in my class on how to improve and fine tune their game topics in the Civics category. The student in this class displayed exemplary conduct and respect towards our visitors. What a great visit!!!!!!

Animation in Flash

We went over the topic in the curiculum on "Animation in Flash" The student were able to design, or use preset buttons and add animation so that the game jumped from one scene to another. All in all it was a good week.!!

Humans VS Inanimate Objects

This week we started to design our game. I reviewed the students games and gave some suggestions. The class is made up of mostly boys and they want to construct violent shooter games. "Men are from Mars and Women are from Venus"; how true this quote is in the preferences of each sex. I suggested that they replace the humans that are being killed with inanimate objects.

Mini Game Project

The mini game project was more challenging than expected as the class students wanted more carrots, the wolf and the bunny. After many revisions and reading of codes we successfully completed our mini-projects and the class is getting ready to post it to the Project's page of their wiki's.

Choice of Games and Genre

Most of my students are boys and of course they either want to have racing and shooting games. I told them they can do that as long as it is educational and relates to a civics project.

September Quarterly Report

My quarterly report was submitted on time. I was amazed to see other reports with similar postings. Great minds think alike.

Civic Track

Today I went over the Civics Track document forward to me from Rachel, with my student; we discussed how to possibly make a shooter game along with other types of games utilizing a civics topic. The students had some AHA moments.

All the students blogs are complete; I am still trying to impress the fact that they need to spell check and review the blog writing before it is published and the fact the "i" should be capitalized since they are very important people. We discussed the use of IM terms and the fact that they should not be used for the class blog.

Blogs

Students have completed their blogs. Many of the students did not adhere to the Globaloria principles when designing their blogs and put videos of baseball and hacking flash games. We discussed copyright rules and regulations and how the blog should follow a Globaloria format.

Start of the School Year

The second day of class has been very exciting. The students set up their Gmail accounts and requested wiki accounts on the Globaloria site. They began working on their profiles; they were thoroughly enjoying their time in class and worked until the bell rang. Thank you Globaloria for an exciting curriculum that keeps students engaged.

WV Technology Conference

Last week I attended the West Virginia Technology Conference and increased my knowledge in delivering 21st Century Skills to students. One particularly interesting website was presented by Mark Moore: Jing at http://jingproject.com/ which allows you to convert PowerPoint's, images, and etc into SWF files. Check it out for free!!!