[Yr7-10it] games

[Pamela Wright]

Hi Vik,
 
This is my topic for my PhD.  I too was blown away at the collaborative and immersive learning when games were introduced into the classroom at primary level. Runescape was a good one, with a little less violence than quake, but graphics are poor in comparison.
 
I've worked with both secondary and primary students on game development using gamemaker and found it appropriate for both levels.  Its free to download from www.gamemaker.nl. I'm about to conduct further research into game development using Scratch, which is also free.
 
Pam
 
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Pam Wright
Lecturer
School of Educational Studies
La Trobe University
9479 2765
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From: yr7-10it-bounces at edulists.com.au on behalf of victor rajewski
Sent: Mon 10/12/2007 5:05 PM
To: Year 7 - 10 Information Technology Teachers' Mailing List
Subject: [Yr7-10it] games



Hi all,

Last Friday I hosted a games night for my students at school. This
involved students bringing a variety of games into the school, then
loading them onto the network or hooking up to the projector. It was a
great bonding experience, and I'll be doing more of them in the future
as a reward for positive behaviour. But what really grabbed me was
seeing students playing Quake Team Arena. Now, I've read research on
how good games are for student learning, multi-tasking, etc, etc. But
I was quite blown away at actually seeing it. One student, who has
considerable difficulty with just about all unfamiliar task, was quite
shaky at the start of the game. Within an hour, he had found his feet,
and within two hours was up there with the best of them (having passed
my own abilities some time before). Keeping track of that many things
at the same time, working together with others, learning by himself,
are all things he typically struggles with in the classroom. Yet here
he had learnt a considerable amount all by himself in a very short
period of time. OK, so the context is violent. I have mixed feelings
about this, but in the context of my particular school, we are trying
to discourage this. So, the question is: "how can we harness this
learning potential?" Ideas I've come up with are by making games -
that link to Alice seems really interesting, but probably aimed more
at higher levels. But where are the immersive 3D educational
environments? I want a a Quake where a student has to solve a logic
problem, or paint a picture, or write something, or analyse a piece of
text or something before they can get to the next stage... Is there
anything like this? Is anyone working on this?

/rant

vik
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