What a fantastic day today we have had at Stephen Heppell’s ‘Be Very Afraid’ event at BAFTA in London. After a hectic day travelling we finally managed to get to BAFTA in Piccadily for the pre-event meeting. After that we all headed back to our hotels.

The boys from St Columba’s PS in Dundee who came with us to London had never flown before and they had never been to London! The apprehension and excitement in their voices as the plane engines roared for take-off at Dundee airport was heard throughout the plane, and the same happened as we landed at London City! A short video of out time at the event can be accessed via this link.

Anyway, what an experience today was. Although the Be Very Afraid event was superb and packed with innovative, cutting-edge practice and bright sparky kids I could not help but feel inward glee at the way the boys from Dundee not only conducted themselves but also with how they demonstrated a thorough knowledge of the Nintendo DS device and the Dr Kawashima game they used. Their ability to convey the excitement, value and challenge they experienced during the project to such a wide and varied range of interested parties was a joy to behold.

They really were a credit to their school and to the Consolarium’s work in trying to put games based learning initiatives in the educational mix. Very well done to you both boys and to all gthe children frm St Columba’s PS and the other schools involved for all their work with this project.

Categories: Consolarium, Dundee, Nintendo, conferences

Just a quick word of cheerio for now and enjoy your break to all of you participating in the games design project next session. I have received feedback from a number of local authorities about pland for next session and I am excited about the way things are going. I was very pleased recently to have has a vist from Stephen Heppell to Dundee. I took him to see Ian Cameron at Castlepark School using Neverwinter Nights. The kids there are not backward at coming forward and on arrival they asked us, ‘which one of you two has got the boat?!” Needless to say it wasn’t me! He was very impressed with the proficiency of the pupils but also with the attempts that we are making through LTS/local authority partnership to develop a core group of games design practice.

To finish, I am delighted to sat that Peter Liddle from Fife Council (Neverwinter Nights) and Jeanette Thomson (Renfrewshire Council) have agreed to give a talk about their experience of using the games design software with their classes at the Scottish Learning Festival in September. They will be on the main LTS stage in the education village. I hope to see some of you there.
Enjoy your holiday!

Categories: general

I spent a very interesting morning in a Primary School in Renfrewshire today where I observed a P7 class using gamemaker as the stimulus for an inaginative writing exercise.

 The pupils are all going to create the same game initially before they move on to making their own games.  They began by deciding on the characters they wished to include in the game (two fish, Gimbal and Bubbles!) and then found images to represent the characters from the internet.  These characters were created in Gamemaker as sprites and objects and the game started to take shape.  The pupils printed the characters and stuck them into their project booklets. They then worked individually to write their own stories about these characters.

 This morning a diver was added to the scenario - the class brainstormed others like a crab, shark, mermaid but after a vote they settled on the diver.  Democracy in action. They also decided that a shipwreck should be included as a background to the game. Once again images were sourced from the internet, agreed upon and pupils then returned to their work books where they added in the new images and expanded their stories.  They will add the diver character and the shipwreck background to Gamemaker shortly.

 Derek asks for our thoughts in relation to the four capacities of a Curriculum for Excellence.  Well this is a mixed ability class - this morning they were all on task and enjoying the lesson.  Of course some stories were more detailed than others but every pupil was enthusiastic, offering suggestions and contributing to the best of their ability.  The class teacher intends that the P7 pupils will show their finished games, and read the accompanying story to the infant class before the summer break.  What a fantastic way for these youngsters to end their Primary school days.

Successful Learners, Confident Individuals, Effective Contributors, Responsible Citizens?- I certainly think so.

Categories: ACfE, Gamemaker, Renfrewshire

I have started introducing area building, conversation and area transitions to my class. After the obligatory “this is F***** S****!” and “Eh’ve had enough, eh’m bored!” the youngsters seem to have really taken to it. Already the surreal conversations are starting to take place…..roll on the talking cactus and army of badgers.

I am gearing up to get my youngsters to peer teach for the rest of the classes. I have already sold one of the other teachers in the school on the idea and after a basic introduction he has started his kids on module creation. His class are big fans of D&D and LoTR trilogy so are extremely enthusiastic about the project. They are already asking about how to put conversations in, and I can’t wait to show them. It is really good to see my youngsters excited about education, especially considering the backgrounds my youngsters come from.

Looking forward to reading contributions from other people (bloggers/posters?).

Categories: Consolarium, Dundee, Fife, Neverwinter Nights

Towards the end of the training session at Stirling we managed to have a discussion about the merits and added value that the context of computer games design may bring to teaching and learning. I have been thinking about this in the context of A Curriculum for Excellence and would like to know what yout thoughts may be in relation to the four capacities:

• Successful Learners
• Confident Individuals
• Effective Contributors
• Responsible Citizens

Which capacity/capacities to you think may be enriched by the prospect of learners in your class being given the opportunity to develop the skills that would allow them to become the creators and not just consumers of games?

Categories: ACfE

Can I just let everyone know that the first time they add a comment to a post in the blog that that comment will not immediately appear. It is held for moderation until I allow it through. This is only a technical issue and is nothing to do with me censoring what appears! After this, your comments will not need moderating and they will immediately appear.

Categories: general

There are many Game Maker resources out there, lots of them originating from groups of teachers in Australia. This page makes a good hub for exploring resources by Bill Kerr, Tony Forster, Margaret Mijers and Al Upton (Bill’s link should point here). All these people are very approachable over email, so feel free to drop them a line if you fancy making an Aussie pen pal! Tony and Al work with Primary aged children and Bill and Margaret work with secondary.

Obviously I can’t go without mentioning the YoYo Games website. If you want to upload games to the LTS Game Maker account you’ll need to log in with the email address jacobmph@hotmail.co.uk (not an active email address) and the password “consolarium”.

 Have fun and stay in touch!

 Jake

PS: If anyone wants to add a review of our book on amazon.co.uk then I won’t object

Categories: Gamemaker

Thought I’d post on what my initial impressions of the software I’ll be using were, and what I plan to do in the next few months.

I’ll be using Neverwinter Nights for games design. NWN is a roleplaying adventure game, that also has a designer’s toolset. The toolset allows players to create massive virtual worlds, which they can fill with multiple areas, characters, monsters, items and shops. The characters can converse with users to weave together a story. There are advanced features for scripting the world and customising the play.

I enjoyed using NWN more than I expected to - at first I was put off by the complexity of the interface but discovered that after “playing about” that I could create basic games without worrying about complex features. As a Computing teacher, I was more interested in the hacking, so it’s good that there are many levels of access to the software.

Due to the different levels of complexity, NWN lends itself to collaborative development. This became apparent as we tried to deal with new ideas and designs.

I plan to work with an S1 group, to create games. I think that I will emphasise the story telling aspect of NWN. I’d like pupils to learn good design skills by thinking about good story telling. Also, I think it would be an ideal way to have senior pupils interact with S1 pupils in a mentoring role.

It will be great to see how others get on with all the packages, and even better to see the work produced by our kids up online.

Categories: Fife, Neverwinter Nights

For those of you working with Gamemaker you may find this teacher’s blog useful.

Categories: Gamemaker

Welcome to the LTS Consolarium Games Design Blog. This is part of the support mechanisms that we have put in place to support this project. The computer games design project is part of the ongoing work of the LTS Consolarium in promoting and developing the computer games based learning agenda in Scottish schools. The focus of this event is to develop a core body of ‘games design’ practice within Scottish schools that will enable us to develop, promote and evaluate the possibilities and challenges that computer games design applications can offer teaching and learning.

The games/applications and local authoritries that we are working with in this project are:

1. Missionmaker: Stirling Council & West Lothian Council
2. Gamemaker: Inverclyde Council & Renfrewshire Council
3. Thinking Worlds: Aberdeenshire Council & Aberdeen City Council
4. Neverwinter Nights: Dundee City Council & Fife Council

This blog is designed to help nurture and support our embryonic games design community. You are very much the lifeblood of the project and the blog is the medium that you can use to communicate your successes challenges, ideas, hopes and even moans! If you’ve got something to share or to ask then pleae use this blog to do it.

As the project develops we anticiapte that the blog will develop a life of its own as your efforts at using whichever application with your class come to life. Your thoughts and experiences will help to inform the wider community about how things have gone for you.

Once again, welcome aboard and  good luck with designing games.

If you wish to access my intoductory presentation then it can be accessed below.

Games design presentation

Categories: Consolarium