Category Archives: 3DGameLab

Making Your Own Games

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I’ve been working through further quests in 3DGameLab and the tools available online are interesting. Sploder is one such tool which allows creation of a variety of different games with stages and levels – depending on the type. Themes are provided and the back end of the games created seems qute extensive. Basically you drag and drop to create the games as you go. The game I started creating is a Retro Arcade game which I called Creepy Cavern.

I was asked to embed it on my blog so this is my attempt at doing that! I hope you can see the potential!

Game Design Camp – What makes a good game?

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Over the last few days I have played lots of games and adventures in Minecraft and Sploder and have been asked to reflect on what makes a good game. Some of the points I have listed regarding Minecraft adventure and puzzle maps included:

  1. Know your audience – age, skills and capabilities.
  2. Allow the normal resource collection process to occur in part of each area of the map so that players can take resources and further develop the tools they might need – here it becomes more open ended and allows for more problem solving to flourish instead of only one right answer.
  3. Give a few more hints via pictures of objects or through the books given to players.
  4. Have a handy hints link somewhere so that if players really get stuck they have some quick access to online information that might be helpful and deduct emeralds or whatever from inventory if they choose to use that link.
  5. Allow players to die and go back to the beginning and start again – make this an option on the respawn screen if possible.

Games made in Sploder were of different varieties. I found some of these quite challenging as my reflexes and understanding of the requirements of the games were severely tested. What I did see as good aspects of the games were as follows:

  1. Being able to see the next part of your goal. (Arcade and 3D Game)
  2. Using simple instructions and introducing new capabilities as the game progresses. (Arcade and 3D Game)
  3. Maintaining rewards as the player progresses not just at the end. (Arcade and 3D Game)
  4. Having the player cover old ground as necessary to complete a puzzle. (Arcade and 3D Game)
  5. Allowing players to progress at their own pace, when ready to act. (Arcade and 3D Game)

Things which struck me about the games I liked –

  1. An avatar and an environment with which you can identify.
  2. Thinking outside the box – which sometimes made me come unstuck.
  3. Rewards as you complete various activities and advance your skills in capabilities.
  4. Being able to start again after dying.

3DGameLab – Digging into Minecraft – More to Contemplate

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Bron Stuckey and I had a great discussion today about the development of digital citizens and digital identity. The point being that currently many students are allowed to go into virtual spaces (games, social networks) which have not developed a sense of community responsibility for the well being of all participants and this often leads to cyberbullying and an atmosphere in which enjoyment is not sustainable.

When I ran the ThinkQuest space at school  we had a “society” in which students shared ideas and worked cooperatively, though they also had the ability to message each other at all times when online. There was a code of conduct introduced for the benefit of all – including what was appropriate and not appropriate to post in this school forum accessed by students aged 7-12. Students were reminded often about the code we had established and counselling occurred when this code was broken. Indeed spaces like Quest Atlantis with its BURST rules and its focus on the development of social commitments interlaced throughout each and every questline, and its monitored chat system, ensured some degree of appropriate behaviour and a spirit of collaboration, though unfortunately I was unable to complete a full trial of this wonderful opportunity within my school.  Read more on QA, and why teacher should care about games, from Sasha Barab here.

These days the stopgap measure is to put in place codes of conduct but do we, as educators or parents and carers, really take responsibility for demonstrating acceptable social networking and digital collaboration to our students? Do we take them into spaces and act as responsible role models so they can see exemplars at work? I think this is something we are all going to have to come to terms with because we owe it to our students to help them become responsible digital citizens. It’s not enough to TELL them how to behave, We have to LIVE the experiences WITH them. This means IMMERSING ourselves alongside our students. SCARY? No, because they often know these spaces better than we do!

Bron pointed me to Anne Collier’s work in the development of digital citizens during one of the quests in 3DGameLab. Her article, Net safety: How social networks can be protective, hits the nail on the head when she discusses findings from recent studies from USATODAY. These studies describe ways in which the protective factors of online groups can happen in those spaces which James Paul Gee refers to as affinity groups. Indeed guilds and forums within MMOGs (Massively Multiplyaer Online Games) have a positive effect on the individuals involved as they in turn respond by helping maintain the codes of practice required to be a responsible member of the online community. I see the tremendous possibilities for developing this atmosphere of responsibility and cooperation between individuals within a Minecraft multiplayer world. As Gee stated “…young people quite naturally function in “teams,” where everybody is an expert in something but they know how to integrate their expertise with everybody else’s; they know how to understand the other person’s expertise so they can pull off an action together in a complicated world.” I see these things starting to happen in our Minecraft group already and it is only early days.

As Bron says in her 3DGameLab Quest “Learners need to be in spaces to exercise and experience citizenship and practice positive norms and they need to do that in spaces with trusted adults like us!” This is a LIVED curriculum.

More on Quest Based Learning

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Further thoughts about developing quests for learning in 3DGameLab. I’ll let the Voki explain these ideas.

 

Further thoughts:

When I started to develop my first quest my main challenge was to think of ways of sharing the students’ work which was not open to others on the internet. I decided to try Google Docs because I have some control over who can see the outcome due to sharing with the link only. The embedding of video wasn’t really that difficult. In fact many of the tools in 3DGameLab are similar to tools I have used in ThinkQuest and also Connect. However 3DGameLab has taught me ways to leverage new technologies – it has also given me more tools to help with assessment and provides me with an accumulation of evidence in each group created. This is probably the best system I have seen. If you put in the hard yards to develop the quests and marking and assessment processes right at the beginning – something which should really be happening at the developmental stages of planning and working to assess via criteria – then the whole thing should work to allow the teacher to concentrate on working with those students who need extra help or those students who will undoubtedly need more challenges after they reach the conclusion of their quests. Isn’t that what every teacher should be striving for?

Making Quests Engaging

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Haskell (2012) defines quest attractiveness as “the operational relationship of three components: capturing one’s interest, sustaining one’s effort, and resulting in a meaningful, personally relevant (highly rated) learning experience.” Developing attractive quests therefore is very important if we are to engage the learner in the process of learning. In my particular situation working with a small group of students I would probably develop a quest based on the use of Minecraft to develop some form of language arts project in which capturing a scripted movie would be the outcome. I know from experience the students are experienced Minecraft players. I know that such an activitiy would be a challenge due to the research and high level of language and technology skills required. As the students are highly motivated completing such a quest, which is beyond the realms of their normal classroom work, would be very motivating and would allow them to work together as a highly accomplished, entrepreneurial team – something I think they crave from the informal learning activities I have seen these students engaged in both at and away from the computer… this then is my challenge!

How Can Education Be More Like a Game?

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Games allow us to make education more fun. Games allow students to make choices, to learn through trial and error. Most importantly, games give students instant feedback. Here are my thoughts on how to make learning more like a game…..

One of the easiest ways to make learning more like a game is to add the element of choice. Choice exists in many types of projects within the school curriculum and some of the basic ways in which choices can be introduced include:

1. Choose which activities to complete in a spelling contract. (Middle to Upper Primary)
2. Choose which book you want to practise reading again and then choose a new activity related to the book (Early Childhood)
3. Choose which point of view you will take in the response to the development of a particular environmental project. (Upper Primary)
4. Choose the role you will undertake in a short group cooperative project e.g. map maker, model designer, publisher, graphic artist etc. (Middle and Upper Primary)
5. Choose the way in which you develop a product for the outcome of research. (All ages)

Prof. John Hattie has examined and explained the many factors which have an impact on student learning and he would agree that probably one of the most important factors is the quality and timeliness of feedback that teachers give students during the learning process. This table was the only one I could fnd that really explained it well. I can see that having an online curriculum would probably increase the instances of feedback received in the case of students who are able to engage with such a curriculum.

I would consider that probably the most important factor enhancing the gamification of learning would be the introduction of points for trying – trial and error is one of the best ways in which we learn. When individuals are learning to problem solve it is probably the most common method of working out how to achieve a goal. Over time there are more complex equations we can call on but when one is a beginner in a particular field, trial and error, along with the motivation to be persistent until reaching the elusive goal, is the major factor contributing to success. Trying to include this in an overcrowded curriculum where everyone is expected to achieve the same standard at the same time is unrealistic. The whole system would have to change in order for students to learn at their own pace and ability level – this is not a new argument when one considers the plight of Gifted and Talented and also Special Needs students who work in classrooms organised by chronological age. Differentiation will be the keystone for changing how the curriculum is viewed, presented and digested.