Fancy yourself as a games designer? Now is your chance to design, create and market your own computer game with great characters and compelling storylines. Your game only has to meet two criteria for your chance to win some great prizes.
It should be an adventure/platform/puzzle game with a story behind it.
The player should be able to control a character and solve a puzzle or collect items to progress to the next level / complete the game.
If you are a pupil at a school in Scotland then you can enter your game in one of four categories:
Primary Individual
Primary Group
Secondary Individual
Secondary Group
Check out some examples and find out more by watching this video.
You can download the high quality mp4 here, or an iPod mp4 here.
When designing and creating your game, and think about
characters and background that will be used in the game
music and sound effects to be used in the game
levels / progression through the game
Use any game creation tool to build your game. For example 2DIY, Scratch, Kodu, Game Maker, SimsCarnival, Greenfoot, Flash, Net Radiant, Unreal Development Kit, Microsoft XNA or any other appropriate platform
Send us the complete game in an email, or a link or on CD/DVD. Make sure you let us know what software you used.
Need some help to get started?
Consolarium Development Officers, Charlie Love and Brian Clark, are available to offer you some assistance. They can be contacted via email (c.love@ltscotland.org.uk and b.clark@LTScotland.org.uk ).
The Final
Successful finalists will be invited to attend the Scottish Learning Festival on the 22nd/23rd September to present their game to a panel of Game Developers and Industry Specialists. A number of great prizes will also be on offer including a tour of the studio at game developers, Denki.
The closing date for all entries is Friday 3rd September 2010
Calling all Jenson Button and Lewis Hamiltons of the future.
Would you like to race head to head, in front of a live audience and win the title of
SLF10 MarioKarter Champion ?
This year at SLF10 there will be a Mario Kart Grand Prix for Primary and Secondary pupils. In order to qualify you must be in the top 4 verified time trial times.
Teachers must submit a photo of a pupil’s verified Time Trial time. These times will be logged on a leader board held on the Consolarium Glow Group and blog so you can track your position against the whole of Scotland. The four fastest primary pupils and four fastest secondary pupils will be invited, with school representatives, to compete in a live race final at SLF10. In order to submit a qualifying time you must run your time trial according to the criteria below.
The character must be
MARIO
The circuit must be
MARIO CIRCUIT
The Kart must be
STANDARD KART
A picture of the complete time trial showing character, kart and time should be forwarded to b.mclaren@ltscotland.org.uk
The four fastest pupils from each sector will then race head to head in the
50cc Mushroom Cup Grand Prix
in front of a live audience at SLF10.
The driver with the most amount of points at the end of the Grand Prix will be the winner and crowned Mario Kart Champion SLF10 and win a Wii and copy of Mario Kart for their school.
The closing date for verified Time Trial times is September 3rd 2010. Qualifiers will be contacted after this date.
Have you thought about using MarioKart in your class as a contextual hub or topic? Check out the Consolarium Glow Group for ideas on how you might do this. You might also want to think about how you might use MarioKart in subject specific lessons also. Share your thoughts on the Discussion Board at the Wii, Mario Kart section of the Consolarium Glow Group.
We also have a small number of MarioKart kits (console, software and controllers) available on loan until SLF10. If you are interested in receiving one on loan send us a summary of how you would use it and what you feel the impact would be upon your pupils. Our team will get together and examine all bids and decide upon the lucky applicants. Please send bids to b.mcmlaren@ltscotland.org.uk and ensure all bids are with us by Monday March 8th.
It’s always a treat to visit classes where the imagination and creativity of teachers and pupils has driven engaging and effective learning and teaching. But shh! What’s that noise? Can anyone else hear the drums?
I think we had better take a look around, follow me as we climb this hill for a look around. Wow! what a panorama – look at all the animals..
Every child I spoke to was enthused and motivated by their topic, as was every teacher. You want creative and imaginative writing? It’s there, from a range of different characters and viewpoints. Functional writing? How many reports, factsheets, biographies would you like? Listening and talking? Interviews, presentations with movies, audio, photographs….
In mathematics the children were learning about measurement in a range of scales (15o kg of elephant poo anyone?) How tall is a giraffe? If an elephant was 2d what would its area be ? Can we draw it to scale in the playground? If we know that can we work out the volume of an elephant? So many mathematical questions. How far away is the Safari we are going on? How will we get there, will we fly and how much will that cost? and on and on and on; learning in context
I saw a variety of media and tribal art where the visiting specialists were involved in the planning and delivery, music teachers teaching tribal drumming and African chants, Masai warrior dances by children in Masai robes and class made jewellery. I heard abou the significance of the jewellery in the different cultures and at every step the use of a range of technology enhanced and extended the learning going on.
And don’t even get me started on co-operation and collaboration as teams completed assignments together and presented their findings, reports and thoughts together. The desire of the pupils to show their work and explain it’s significance and what they had learned was excellent, not just to me but to other classes and their parents and carers. I saw children explaining food webs to their visitors, anything you wanted to know about a particular animal? Just ask the resident experts…..
I was invited to a couple of Parent Council meetings this week, asked in to explain the role of Games Based Learning within A Curriculum for Excellence and to showcase some of the projects the Consolarium already has underway and potentially what parents could do to support it in their own child’s school.
Many families will already be familiar with the range of consoles and software available and most of the folks I spoke to at the meetings had more stuff in their houses than I had; yet very few had ever played with them and almost none had played them with their children. (Derek Robertson writes a brilliant blog post “Cod Liver Oil and Effective Learning..”on his personal site at HotMilkyDrink which is well worth a read, from a parent’s perspective)
One of the best things about the job is seeing the sparks of enthusiasm and creativity created by the GBL approach and this was evident again as a room full of parents and carers were excitedly discussing the kinds of things their children could be learning. One of the meetings ended with the Parent Council pretty much demanding (in a good way!) that the school take money from them and get out and buy consoles and implement them in their children’s learning straight away.
A positive partnership between parents and school is really important and ACfE provides a perfect backdrop against which these relationships can be strengthened; and the games based learning approach augments this beautifully.
All of these consoles in homes and all of these learning opportunities. A germ of an idea is beginning to form…………
In the meantime check out the Trailer for Parent Toolkit below
Well that’s it, Christmas has been consigned to the memory banks and most of the New Year’s resolutions have been broken already (although with one notable exception that we will get to in a minute!)
Santa was particularly generous this year bringing both a Wii and a couple of Dsi s for my children so if we add this to the hardware I use for work and my own stuff, my house now contains
2 x Wii 1 x PS2 1 x PS3 1 x Xbox 3 x DSi 1 x DSlite 1 x PC 2 x Notebook 1 x Macbook
And a selection of software for each of them. Is this too much? I see it as a level of my commitment to the job
I am very excited by the work that is being taken on by the Consolarium team this term. For my own part I am looking forward to watching how the trial of Mangahigh pans out across nine schools in Glasgow and one in Edinburgh. My colleague Brian Clark and I will be meeting all of these schools, teachers and pupils collecting thoughts, feelings and data.
Wallace High School in Stirling is running a very exciting cross curricular interdepartmental topic for S1 using Professor Layton and the Curious Village. Maths, Geography, Art, English, Music and ICT departments are all involved and being coordinated by a very enthusiastic Maths teacher, Suzanne Harris
If you can believe it, the planning for SLF10 is well underway and the Consolarium team has some very exciting things planned for this year. Follow our blog and podcast and get your school involved. We will also continue to instigate, develop and support a huge range of work across Scotland, if you are undertaking work in the area of GBL and games design please get in touch and let us know.
And as for the only resolution left. The #wiifitweightlosschallenge. Last week was the inaugural weigh in, oh dear! There is nothing like a bit of public humiliation to provide some serious motivation. Follow our progress on the podcast and if I am visiting your school over the next couple of months please hide the biscuits.
Over the last 3 days I have been visiting schools in Highland Region with whom we will be working over the coming months. The enthusiasm and hospitality from everyone I met was brilliant and nothing, I’m sure, to do with the hardware and software that goes with the project!( although one school did take great delight in calling me “wii man”)
My journey took me just over 600 miles and 3 days from Castletown, just outside Thurso to Alvie, just outside Aviemore, via Dornoch, Dingwall and Merkinch in Inverness. Every school was different in many ways (in fact one school had almost twice as many primary sevens as another had pupils) and served a wide range of catchments; but everyone showed a real commitment to embracing technology to enhance learning and teaching and were in no doubt to the impact it might have on their children. I am really looking forward to working with the schools over the coming months and will post regular updates on our progress.
I was delighted to have the opportunity to return to Lairdsland Primary School on June 23rd to see how Cooking Mama:World Kitchen had developed as a project in P3/4 with class teacher Catriona Calvert. I was enchanted and excited by what I saw and heard – quality learning, enthusiastic and confident children completely absorbed in the world of international food and cuisine!
Catriona explained to me that the project had started by choosing four countries; these were chosen to reflect the nationalities of families in the school. The children had then researched these countries and created a fact file. This had given them the opportunity to extend their geographical vocabulary and knowledge of sense of place.
Many contexts and opportunities for writing were facilitated by the game. These included writing biographies for imaginary chefs that were brought to life using Crazy Talk, booklets about the equipment used in the kitchen, instructions for making a chef’s hat and apron and menus for use in the Lairdsland Café (a role play area in the classroom where e.g. goods were priced and recipes costed out).
The class had collaborated to create a ‘Foods of the World’ recipe book and made a profit of £300! The children had written letters to parents appealing for recipes, they word processed the recipes, advertised the book and coordinated the sales including handling the money and keeping accounts. Catriona explained that the preparation of the book had heightened the children’s awareness of different cooking methods, the variety of foodstuffs and different cultures.
Health Week in the school had provided an opportunity for cross sector working – staff and pupils from Lenzie Academy had come and worked with the class and cooked ‘Tortilla Wraps’ with the children. I had the pleasure of being present at the first screening of the ‘cookery shows’ that the children had made with the help of pupils from P6. This process had involved writing a script, identifying props, accurately weighing and measuring ingredients and adopting the role of chef and presenter in front of the camera. The films had been edited by the P6 pupils and the results were fantastic! Everyone was given a copy to take home as a memento and to share with their families.
The visiting art teacher had explored working with different media with the children, a classroom assistant from Poland had talked to the class about her home country and what it was like to live there and the portraits of celebrity chefs were amazing! Children handled money confidently as they worked through shopping lists and easily navigated their way around the internet as they searched for information about their favourite foods and recipes.
I had a wonderful time in P3/4 at Lairdsland Primary school – I saw rich cross curricular learning, facilitated by creative and innovative teacher Catriona Calvert resulting in motivated, enthusiastic and confident children! Cooking Mama:World Kitchen – obviously a recipe for great learning!
I love watching the Grand Prix so it will be no surprise to learn I also love Mario Kart for the Wii.I could see an opportunity here for a great context for learning so I was delighted that Head Teacher, Gillian Penny at Gavinburn Primary School could also see the potential and was happy to trial it for me with a P5 class.
I visited on June 18th and class teacher Lorna McNicol had done a great job. The P5 classroom was festooned with pieces of writing, maths and art work all arising out of the context facilitated by Mario Kart.When I arrived the children were busy rehearsing advertisements about an up and coming racing championship. Later on these were captured on the computer complete with sound effects and music, ready to be burnt to CD to take home as a memento of the project, all done with the help of a P7 tutor. Nice to see ICT permeating through the learning!
The children had been organised into seven kart teams of four. The teams competed on Mario Kart and a championship had been created out of that. All the teams had names – Killer Karts, Wheels on Fire, Mega Mushrooms – and everyone had their own name badge.Team logos and pod stickers for their karts had also been designed.
Writing: Each kart team comprised a driver, a mechanic, a press agent and a manager and they had written biographies about imaginary characters who are drivers, mechanics etc.The children had interviewed each other in role as their imaginary characters and produced an account of that interview.They had drafted letters to a company asking for sponsorship and had also written reports about an accident at the race track.Lorna explained that drama had been used where ever possible to help with the writing process. She said that it had really helped the boys in particular to be immersed in this imaginary world with the visual aspect of the game helping them with a starting point for writing activities.One boy said, “ I don’t like writing but I liked writing The Accident Report.We had pictures of a racing car accident and imagined that we were there and of course we have crashes when we play Mario Kart!”
Maths: Problem solving in maths fitted easily into this context with opportunities to calculate fuel consumption, speed and costs.The children had looked at decimal places for lap timing using a model race track and had also investigated the cost of flights and accommodation to visit a Grand Prix location.
Art and Design: Logos had been designed, karts made from junk material, suits designed for racing drivers and a crowd scene witnessing the crash had been created.
Next week, the plan was to focus on Science and some of the science teachers from the secondary school were coming to get involved in the investigation of friction, air resistance, stream lining and water and fire proof materials in the classroom.Great – and an opportunity for cross sector working too!!
Lorna is a probationary teacher and this is her first experience of games – based learning and she has been delighted with the enthusiasm and motivation that the children have shown. The children were obviously still motivated, energetic and excited and were producing work of high quality – and there was only a week to go before the holidays!! Lorna has been enthusiastically sharing her experiences with other probationary teachers which is great news.
Much more had been planned for the project, but the end of term was looming.Drama, music, animation, web design and a trip to a kart track will all be on the agenda next time they run the project….(and Gillian says they will definitely be doing it again….!)
Being involved with and leading the games based learning initiatives with the Consolarium is great fun but it is also a great experience in terms of meeting teachers who take some of our ideas forward and then really make the realisation of such projects their own. We are finding that in doing so, these teachers are setting the standard for the use of some of the games. Names that immediately spring to mind in this regard include Kim Aplin and subsequently Ollie Bray with Guitar Hero and Anna Rossvoll, Ruth McDonald and Michelle Law with Nintendogs as well as many others who have taken this on and extended the practice of the appropriate integration of computer games into teaching and learning. I’d now like to add another name to this list and introduce Margaret Young to everyone. A teacher at Port of Mentieth PS near Stirling Margaret has been using Moshi Monsters with her P.1 – P.3 class. I wrote about Moshi Monsters a wee while back due to my interest being stirred when I watched my wee girls using it last summer. It reminded me of Nintendogs in the way it replicated much of what that game does in terms of looking after a virtual creature: ensuring it was healthy and happy as well as managing a budget. However, Moshi Monsters has problem solving, early literacy and numeracy tasks all embedded into the game play as well as the facility to introduce social networking to children via a friends finder and a noticeboard. However, this game was freely available (although an enhanced experience via subscription is now on offer) and can be used by anyone that has an computer with an internet connection.
I have been working on ways in which we could try an extended pilot for Moshi Monsters but while I have been doing that Margaret Cassidy, ICT Development Officer in Stirling decided to try it out with one of her teachers. She introduced the idea to Margaret Young at Port of Menteith PS and since the initial presentation of the idea the most fantastic set of associated rich learning tasks has just flourished.
I had the great pleasure of visiting the class last Wednesday morning and within 5 minutes I was captivated and enchanted by what I was seeing and hearing and I found myself like a child in a sweet-shop in terms of not knowing where to look in terms of the quality learning that was happening.
I had a discussion with Margaret about how she got involved in the project, how she managed it and what added value she feels it has brought to learning in her class and to her continuing professional development.
The game at the heart of the learning experience
The most prevalent method that we employ in our Consolarium initiatives usually involves the game becoming the contextual hub about which learning experiences are planned for and presented to the children. This gives the teacher the freedom and flexibility to combine curricular areas and present learning tasks via the creation of a collaborative story or a process of enquiry. The flexibility of such an approach allows the teacher to accommodate any ideas and questions that come from the children as a result of their experiences and interests arising from the learning tasks. This is exactly what Margaret has done with Moshi. as from the following examples you will see that the game really became the beating heart of the rich learning in the class.
Writing
Very many contexts for writing were facilitated by the game. These included writing adverts to sell your Moshi Monster’s house, writing to explain the desing of flags made to represent Monstro City as well as news flashes about what has been happening in Monstro City itself. I was particularly impressed by the idea of making a tourist information leaflet for visitors to refer to if they were planning a visit to Monstro City. Have a look at how the teacher did this:
…and have a look at some their adverts:
Talking and listening
An engaging debate was cultivated in the classroom when the question of whether or not the children should allow new building work to be permitted on Flutterby Fields: a beautiful fun place to be in Monstro City. The teacher talked about the development of the children’s thinking and their ability to consider and reflect on opposing points of view in this task and even how some children changed their minds as a result of the discussions and arguments put forward by their peers.
Encouraging problem solving in maths
In order to function in the game you must visit the Hall of Puzzles. This is packed full of puzzles that engagement with rewards you with Rox, the currency in Monstro City. The more Rox you have then the more you can spend in the various shops that you can visit. The puzzles are particularly engaging and the children were all very keen to tell me what their high scores were at many of the different puzzle that are available. The teacher has worked with the children to set up the Hall of Puzzles in the class. This became a really appealing ‘den’ in the classroom for the children to visit and explore a range of puzzles and games with each other. Have a look at how this was done:
Design and Technology
The children were asked to think about what kind of shops should be in Monstro City. These ideas were then brought to reality as the children made their own models of their shops from card, paper and other materials. Have a look:
Animation
Children are naturally creative. They have ideas. One of the superb aspects of learning with ICT is that it gives young learners the vehicle through which they can express their creativity and ideas and in doing so develop their ICT skills set. They can also have a positive impact on planning, presentation and awareness of audience. Here we have one example of a stop motion animation created by two 6 year old children. Just look at what they can do….
They also used Crazy Talk to bring to life their Monster characters that had been created in Art & Design.
Keeping connected and being safe
One of the benefits of using this resource is that children can keep connected. One child in this class spends six months of the year in Scotland and six months in New Zealand. Currently in her antipodean abode she can keep in touch with the class via her noticeboard. As Moshi Monsters is freely available to anyone (see their safety policy) there is an issue in terms of ensuring that the children are not exposed to any inappropriate contact. The teacher and the class decided to use a special code for the duration of the project and this meant that they could only accept a friend request if this code was in the name of the person requesting to make friends. This meant that the community was kept to the classroom and any worries about unknown people becoming involved with the children in the classroom context were fully addressed.
There has been some concern about children wanting to play with their Moshi Monster for far too long at home. Incentives to jump up the levels and to ensure that your Monster is happy and healthy in the game play need to be maintained and balanced in terms of appropriate time spent on the game. Lessons need to be learned about what the Consolarium can do to ensure that parents are fully informed about such initiatives, what benefits they can bring to their child’s learning but also what the school and the home need to do to ensure that children understand that too much of one thing is not necessarily good for them. Everything in moderation is a lesson that we can help children learn.
Maybe Moshi Monsters also need to consider ways in which children can withdraw from the game for periods of time without their lack of engagement with their monster leading to its demise! Something akin to the ‘dog hotel’ in Nintendogs wouldn’t go amiss here.
A delightful time at Port of Menteith was most certainly had by me. Rich learning, happy and motivated children, innovative teachers and a Headteacher willing to allow informed risks with new ideas and approaches in the use of ICT and games, in this example, to happen in his school.
Superb stuff and very many thanks to all at Port of Mentieth PS and Stirling Council for enabling such innovative work to take place. Now, how do I make an extended study of this work….?
Hello, I’m Kim Aplin. I’ve been working in the Consolarium with Derek Robertson since January. I was interested to read in The Times today that Scottish children are falling behind in science because they see science as ‘uncool’. Well this certainly was not the case at Meldrum School last week where children had been investigating friction and gravity and excited by their learning!…..
Kororinpa at Meldrum School: The project is now in full swing in P5. I was very pleased to see how enthusiastic and excited the children and their teacher, Hazel Sim, were about their whole learning experience. The work that had been done with the game involved the investigation of friction and the designing of the class marble run. The game had been used to analyze what they could incorporate into their designs for their marble runs. The class have worked together to create a wall mounted run that they are immensely proud of.
There had been a thorough investigation into friction with a consideration of where friction is helpful and unhelpful. One of the children suggested that making rubbings of the soles of shoes would allow them to study the patterns closely and then they could work out how the patterns related to friction and whether a shoe was ‘fit for purpose’ – an investigation suggested by the children with a real objective!
Hazel reported that the project has resulted in an excellent ethos in the classroom. The children are hooked into the learning and some in particular have displayed a real progress in developing their practical problem solving skills that they are now transferring into other curricular areas.The children are also planning and writing stories about their own marble characters and they are creating animated PowerPoint presentations of their stories so that they can be shared easily with younger children. The characters are displayed on the wall and the children are incorporating each other’s characters into their stories.The quality of the descriptive language in their stories is fantastic. The children also suggested writing poetry about the feelings and emotions you might feel if you were travelling down the marble run. The poems are tremendous with a rich and varied vocabulary that captures the imagined journey eloquently. Have a look at this example by Holly in P.5:
The Marble Run
Gradually, little by little
The marble starts to race
It’s very cold just now
Until it builds up its pace
Swerving, hopping, spiralling
It’s crashing quite a lot
So much friction going on
The marble’s getting hot
Wee! It made a jump
Lifting off happily on its back
Soaring over treetops high
Until its back on track
Very gently the marble
Skids daintily to a halt
It was dizzily racing down the run
Though it’s not the marble’s fault
The class described in detail how they worked together as a team to solve problems and listened to everyone’s ideas. They had also discussed their learning and thinking and this has been recorded in their big talking book and clearly illustrates the problem solving process that they have gone through.The class have designed and made their own games. They used Kororinpa to discuss what they liked about a game and incorporated these things into their own ideas for designs. They all agreed that playing Kororinpa gave them a really good starting point for the design process.They have even re-enacted being in a marble run with equipment in the gym!This is the first GBL project that Hazel has been involved in. She is delighted and excited by the learning that is taking place and how engaged and motivated the children are. It has resulted in quality discussion, quality work, confident children and a fun, active way to learn. The children summed it all up: “It has been a fun way of learning that made learning easier and gave us lots of ideas”. Kororinpa in Meldrum School has definitely facilitated the creation of a rich context for quality, active, challenging and enjoyable cross curricular learning!
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