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!!!

Progress

I finished the final design of the presentation for Battlestar Globaloria's game. I completed it in PowerPoint as I was only the designer. I tried to upload the presentation to the group wiki, but the site would not take PowerPoint files. I guess I need to try to put this presentation in another format to upload. Any suggestions from the Globalorist's?

Tinkering

Last fall our Web Design class began working on the Thinkquest Web Page Contest. During the process of completing the Web pages, using Html, the class encountered a problem with vidoes not playing on the developing Web sites. The class began searching for codes or ways to be able to upload the videos correctly. Through their tinkering and collaboration, several students found if they published the video on Google, copied the code, and pasted into the coded Web site the videos would work. That was an enlightening tinkering experience.

My most memorable learning experience began when I went back to college for a teaching degree, at the age of 47, due to the fact that my husband was involved in a mine accident and could no longer work. Thanks to the United Mine Workers Union, I was provided the funds for a college education. Attending Fairmont State, a non-traditional educational institution, I discovered a comfortable learning platform with instructors that guided and encouraged students to suceed. I realized, at that time, that you are never too old to learn and that I had loved learning as well as, discovering and delving into the new emerging technological advances.

My second post

My topic is going to be the Greening of America. I reviewed a game relating to this topic at http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/hottopics/climatechange/climate_challenge/ ; the Climate Challenge forces the user, who is acting as the President, to make choices to please the people and provide basic necessities, insure international relations and reduce pollution. I was surprised at some of the poor choices I made. The final news article detailed the choice for the European people and how it influenced the approval rating of their current president, making great feedback. I found this to be an extremely well organized and educational game that will increase civics learning.

The other game I played was at http://www.myslife.org/Global_Climate/en/play/Sims/intervention which was Human Intervention in the Climate Cycle: You drag power plants, cars, and other items in and out of the picture while watching the effects of your actions on the production of CO2, which is evidenced by the increase or decrease in bars of the embedded chart. This is a very educational game especially for the sciences. It will also help with the project, the greening of American, which will be instituted in the classroom at my school. The game was interesting, educational, well planned and worked smoothly. I would recommend this game.


Human Intervention in the Carbon Cycle

My First Post

The first morning at Globaloria has been exciting. I have met many new teachers and staff members. Everyone has been extremely hospitable.