tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-64992264374196433962024-03-05T02:30:44.985-08:00Games and LearningGames and Learninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10525760825218991948noreply@blogger.comBlogger65125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6499226437419643396.post-55269869012792172872019-04-17T07:22:00.001-07:002019-04-17T07:22:33.023-07:00Fortnite Creative in Class Update: Parent Permission Slip<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbOjKXE7HMC9pLtfZfWG-RxMTJL-QOaA2FNGwWonCK5h9Q6ak-X8hpKC7hw7ujYxjU9ncCC9099FK332JliIw7CB4nPNgYT8Vr06rTBj6v0OGGka8NrO7Hf2x6USdkQMlOzmLZjrh61I4/s1600/creative.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="1280" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbOjKXE7HMC9pLtfZfWG-RxMTJL-QOaA2FNGwWonCK5h9Q6ak-X8hpKC7hw7ujYxjU9ncCC9099FK332JliIw7CB4nPNgYT8Vr06rTBj6v0OGGka8NrO7Hf2x6USdkQMlOzmLZjrh61I4/s320/creative.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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It all started with the question I was anticipating, "Can we use Fortnite Creative for our final game?" I saw this as an opportunity to empower my students. My concern was with the fact that as a first person shooter, the stigma of Fortnite would come with some administrative resistance. I thought it best to have the students craft their argument in favor of using it and receive approval from our admin. They wrote a <a href="http://gamesandlearning1.blogspot.com/2019/04/should-we-allow-fortnite-creative-as.html" target="_blank">great persuasive letter</a> and upon follow up discussions with our tech department and curriculum supervisor, students were granted approval pending parent permission. <div>
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Their next step was to write the permission slip and have it signed so they could proceed. Amazing how quickly students work when they are intrinsically motivated :) Below is the permission slip for anyone who would like to use it with their students. </div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 137%;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 137%;">Dear Parents/Guardians,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 137%;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 137%;">
<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 137%;">We are students in Mr. Isaacs period
4 game design class and we have received the task of creating our very own game
for our final project. Mr. Isaacs said we could choose the tool of our choice
like minecraft, unity, twine, super mario maker and almost anything we can
think of.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>A couple of students asked if
we could used Fortnite Creative, a section of Fortnite that is dedicated to
building your own world. Mr Isaacs sees the value of using Fortnite Creative as
a tool to create our game but wanted us to get approval from the school first.
We did and all that is needed now<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>is
parent/guardian approval for students to be allowed to use Fortnite Creative in
class.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 137%;">
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<span lang="EN" style="font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 137%;">There are many benefits of using
Fortnite creative compared to other software like Minecraft. Fortnite creative
saves your work to the cloud so you could access your work on any computer,
video game console, or your even your phone, where on Minecraft your limited to
only the computer your working on. In class students will only be working on a
computer, but Fortnite allows students to work on their game at home, which
will allow students final game to reach its full potential. Another advantage
about Fortnite creative is that new things are added everyday and updates are
released every week. This will allow Students to constantly update their game
and improve it. Since Fortnite creative is apart of Fortnite, students friends
would have easy access to test and play their game anywhere they want. Mr.
Isaacs has been researching this and found a number of educators using Fortnite
creative in their classrooms. They have had good experiences with it and the
students haven't needed to use any of the guns or questionable aspects that
would be considered inappropriate for school, but mainly focused on all the creative
possibilities like obstacle courses and other challenges like races. Students
can even create their own music note by note, which is a vital aspect for game
design, One teacher named Mrs. Wright “<span style="color: #14171a;">used it as a
student choice for the design and construction of a medieval castle” in her
social studies class. Epic games, the creator of Fortnite also made Unreal
Engine, a game creator for super high end games. They are trying to make
Fortnite creative an easier to understand version of Unreal Engine (an entry
point to using their more sophisticated tools), but for everyday people. Like
Fortnite creative, every game design software has the possibility to input
guns. This is not necessary and students will have to make sure their game is
appropriate for school. Students will only use creative aspects of Fortnite
creative and nothing violent, so anybody at any age can play it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 137%;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: #14171a; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 137%;">We hope you understand
that despite the stigma that fortnite has associated with it, we are asking you
to let your children use Epic Games open ended tool as we would any other game
design engine. Thank you for your consideration.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 137%;">
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; line-height: 137%;">
<span lang="EN" style="color: #14171a; font-size: 10.0pt; line-height: 137%;">I,
______________________________________________________________ (Parent /
Guardian Signature) allow my child, ________________________ use Fortnite creative
in the classroom and understand that my child is taking responsibility to
ensure that any content created is appropriate for school. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Games and Learninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10525760825218991948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6499226437419643396.post-23813851709928521112019-04-11T21:30:00.000-07:002020-03-02T05:21:03.768-08:00Using functions in Minecraft (Education Edition and Bedrock)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I teach game design and development and I encourage my students to use command blocks and redstone to automate functions in their games. It's pretty much essential as automation in student created games is required for many game elements including automatically spawning mobs, opening doors, creating check points, changing the game mode, cloning areas of their game to reset them, and so much more.<br />
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In Minecraft Education Edition, NPCs are pretty awesome as they help to drive / narrate the story but also have the ability to issue commands, and not just one command, but as many commands as you want them to execute. Command blocks are great as well, but one limiting factor is that you can only execute one command from each command block. You can use chain command blocks to execute a number of consecutive commands, but you cannot simply enter line after line of code in one command block (something I keep begging the minecraft team for :) ) . Well, now there's an answer...<br />
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You can create functions in a text file and call upon that function from a command block (or from the command line in the game.)<br />
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There are a number of steps to make this whole thing work as it essentially works within a behavior pack.<br />
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So, here goes...<br />
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<b>Step 1:</b><br />
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Download a standard behavior pack. I suggest going to the <a href="https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/addons/" target="_blank">Minecraft Add-Ons page</a> or you can just download the Vanilla Behavior pack <a href="https://aka.ms/behaviorpacktemplate" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbAEcsDu70NjX7a8MuSDg-eiN3eeJhEiGpsGnohjl7QjFFUXgXP9kSE282FYxIROMsJm8txDAoc4m2LdegmTqBxQQ8guCBjs2omABuLx9lCzdj0yPvJLrHrFdC6K15xratmRqA8nKBq3g/s1600/vanilla+behavior+pack+download.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="185" data-original-width="1422" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbAEcsDu70NjX7a8MuSDg-eiN3eeJhEiGpsGnohjl7QjFFUXgXP9kSE282FYxIROMsJm8txDAoc4m2LdegmTqBxQQ8guCBjs2omABuLx9lCzdj0yPvJLrHrFdC6K15xratmRqA8nKBq3g/s1600/vanilla+behavior+pack+download.PNG" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Add caption</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>Step 2:</b><br />
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Once you download the pack, you will want to extract the behavior pack. I suggest renaming the folder to something unique for you (rather than Vanilla Behavior Pack).<br />
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<b>Step 3:</b><br />
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Place this folder in the com.mojang/behavior_packs folder.<br />
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The path to the com.mojang folder is as follows:<br />
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<div dir="ltr" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #535353; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.64; margin-bottom: 13.5px; word-break: break-word;">
<span id="docs-internal-guid-1dfa4cf6-01e2-5612-9ad8-da3bf848857e" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Minecraft for Windows 10 </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #535353; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.64; margin-bottom: 13.5px; word-break: break-word;">
<span id="docs-internal-guid-1dfa4cf6-01e2-5612-9ad8-da3bf848857e" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">C:\Users\(your pc username)\AppData\Local\Packages\Microsoft.MinecraftUWP_8wekyb3d8bbwe\LocalState\games\com.mojang\</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: white; box-sizing: border-box; color: #535353; font-family: "Open Sans", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 1.64; margin-bottom: 13.5px; word-break: break-word;">
<span id="docs-internal-guid-1dfa4cf6-01e2-5612-9ad8-da3bf848857e" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Apple iOS</span></span></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-1dfa4cf6-01e2-5612-9ad8-da3bf848857e" style="box-sizing: border-box;"><span style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 12pt; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Apps/com.mojang.minecraftpe/Documents/games/com.mojang/</span></span></div>
<b>Step 4:</b><br />
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Open the folder and edit the manifest.json file with notepad or a similar text editor<br />
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Original manifest.json file looks like this:<br />
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{<br />
"format_version": 1,<br />
"header": {<br />
"description": "Example vanilla behavior pack",<br />
"name": "Vanilla Behavior Pack",<br />
"uuid": "ee649bcf-256c-4013-9068-6a802b89d756",<br />
"version": [0, 0, 1]<br />
},<br />
"modules": [<br />
{<br />
"description": "Example vanilla behavior pack",<br />
"type": "data",<br />
"uuid": "fa6e90c8-c925-460f-8155-c8a60b753caa",<br />
"version": [0, 0, 1]<br />
}<br />
],<br />
"dependencies": [<br />
{<br />
"uuid": "743f6949-53be-44b6-b326-398005028819",<br />
"version": [0, 0, 1]<br />
}<br />
]<br />
}<br />
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I'm sure this looks confusing. This is the manifest file that is bundled with the behavior pack. In order to use it for behavior packs, resource packs, or in this case functions, you need to make a few changes.<br />
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First off, you should change the description and name to something more relevant to you. You also need to include the version of minecraft and the minimum version. You need to change the uuid for the header and modules sections. You can use a <a href="https://www.uuidgenerator.net/" target="_blank">uuid generator.</a> There is also an <a href="https://www.uuidtools.com/" target="_blank">open source UUID generator</a> created by Alan Reed. If you are not using resource packs, you should <b>delete</b> the "dependencies" section or you will receive an error indicating that a dependency is missing - might not be a big deal, but let's do our best to get rid of any errors.<br />
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Here's what my updated manifest.json file looks like:<br />
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{<br />
"format_version": 1,<br />
"header": {<br />
"description": "functiontest",<br />
"name": "functiontest2",<br />
"uuid": "cc97a5a3-5bad-11e9-8647-d663bd873d93",<br />
"version": [1, 9, 3],<br />
<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>"min_engine_version": [1, 9, 3]<br />
},<br />
"modules": [<br />
{<br />
"description": "functiontest",<br />
"type": "data",<br />
"uuid": "7ea17070-5bae-11e1-8647-d663bd873d93",<br />
"version": [1, 9, 3]<br />
}<br />
]<br />
}<br />
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I changed the description and name in the header and the description in the modules section. I changed both uuids using a <a href="https://www.uuidgenerator.net/" target="_blank">uuid generator</a>. As mentioned previously, you can also find an open source UUID generator <a href="https://www.uuidtools.com/" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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<b>Step 5: </b><br />
Create the function folder and file. The folder must reside inside the behavior pack folder that you are working with and the file must have the extension .mcfunction. For example, you can create a folder called functions and a file called function_house.mcfunction. You can use a sub folder within the functions folder to keep organized if you will be using multiple functions. If so, you can call upon them using the subfolder name / file name. You should edit this file in notepad or a similar text editor.<br />
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My test.mcfunction file looks like this:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq-yht9vHjkMe6XLCNgfSkeZTmmwx8rLN0cGOH_b00WGe0kh4LqhnsmN11wSXG0LAT7T7n7egU_4Vqq_0A0hCSgD-EB3LrMwjsBrosXywEr-9EOAeHFGlOMj8JXYY33OmuQ-WcKd6gxcg/s1600/testfunction+screen.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="614" data-original-width="1200" height="163" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjq-yht9vHjkMe6XLCNgfSkeZTmmwx8rLN0cGOH_b00WGe0kh4LqhnsmN11wSXG0LAT7T7n7egU_4Vqq_0A0hCSgD-EB3LrMwjsBrosXywEr-9EOAeHFGlOMj8JXYY33OmuQ-WcKd6gxcg/s320/testfunction+screen.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
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Here's what the folder structure looks like:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpjWsZtW_tDa0RL0aUuMgwg_gmOncjbfspiXkXmRzbhFmDsBPs1mUyYoZ3lZDQ9x5xFq3zZX6_IZBeRhhkYo2EI0o6vKekSgy70Xz0jmpOaOCeUSDi_UWhfw0_tS7wluZoBTgknvpGczU/s1600/folder+structyure.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="1497" height="128" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpjWsZtW_tDa0RL0aUuMgwg_gmOncjbfspiXkXmRzbhFmDsBPs1mUyYoZ3lZDQ9x5xFq3zZX6_IZBeRhhkYo2EI0o6vKekSgy70Xz0jmpOaOCeUSDi_UWhfw0_tS7wluZoBTgknvpGczU/s640/folder+structyure.PNG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<b>Step 6: Package your behavior pack to add it to the game!</b></div>
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Now you need to compress or zip this folder back up so that you can use it with the game. Go to the directory for the behavior pack (in my example above it would be called functiontest2. Right click on the folder in windows explorer. Choose send to -> compressed .zip file. This will compress the folder. The resulting file (compressed file) will be something.zip (i.e. functiontest2.zip). Change the extension to .mcpack or .mcworld (i.e. rename it to functiontest2.mcpack or functiontest2.mcworld. I haven't played with the .mcworld but that's the extension for a minecraft (education edition or win10) world while .mcpack is the extension for a behavior pack.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmX-duxGaKXEm7TNItnQxgyW4jkL6jcnOV-UpCBf2Q1Rs4xRyt6PnPU6kBpFE3uX15Y9qL-94JAhQM-i5vte9tmo7UaFz5m4wyXT6l4y9JKIRbcIpwBgbE2dOy40hVeZJS6099jTGcvMw/s1600/Screenshot+%252865%2529.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1275" data-original-width="1370" height="371" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmX-duxGaKXEm7TNItnQxgyW4jkL6jcnOV-UpCBf2Q1Rs4xRyt6PnPU6kBpFE3uX15Y9qL-94JAhQM-i5vte9tmo7UaFz5m4wyXT6l4y9JKIRbcIpwBgbE2dOy40hVeZJS6099jTGcvMw/s400/Screenshot+%252865%2529.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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<b>Step 7: Add the behavior pack to a minecraft world. </b><br />
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You can actually double click (or open) the .mcpack file. This will import it into Minecraft Education Edition or Minecraft Windows 10 Edition so that you will easily find it when you are ready to add it to your world. You can create a new world and add the behavior pack.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguX_wFrveZSkFdRlwOH2W_fvDs8NEvBH5MlHijlf-BjttEVwzq7myVG1JuR8z9U44KB24ruvKQfS2RhWhY5T_45RsqNormJ0Z4_i7qE7yiELPEpaPL0T4kMTobxKmaTW69Wbr__7G34Qk/s1600/add+behaviorpack.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="749" data-original-width="1600" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguX_wFrveZSkFdRlwOH2W_fvDs8NEvBH5MlHijlf-BjttEVwzq7myVG1JuR8z9U44KB24ruvKQfS2RhWhY5T_45RsqNormJ0Z4_i7qE7yiELPEpaPL0T4kMTobxKmaTW69Wbr__7G34Qk/s640/add+behaviorpack.PNG" width="640" /></a></div>
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Select the behavior pack and click on the + to add it to this world.<br />
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<b>Step 8: Play your game and test your function!</b><br />
<b><br /></b>
You can enter the function command in the command line...<br />
<b><br /></b>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8pz-rRXIGORMKImFmDmHOHOS_2jI7TY7E5L9uRtbJUxL0OSsc0eZGMbW_hWmqGvPyM0SDu7RP5lBx_U5C2bC6wSUqqOEo3XFI03U_G86zuzW0rRr65DcI8KbKWKp8-qsHRAFrx34OufI/s1600/function+command+line.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1197" data-original-width="1315" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8pz-rRXIGORMKImFmDmHOHOS_2jI7TY7E5L9uRtbJUxL0OSsc0eZGMbW_hWmqGvPyM0SDu7RP5lBx_U5C2bC6wSUqqOEo3XFI03U_G86zuzW0rRr65DcI8KbKWKp8-qsHRAFrx34OufI/s320/function+command+line.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
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or you can add it in a command block ...</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf1Az-dz__YKw1Q75T8y96S4wABvqkN_WezLtA-O5lJZUq55HmSQzWgMF1LvBICXt_qXZWbamLwyVNH8iqVKhimifcLoH4gfrFQbK5deRxKfAGGO6puXqQqQ7iBG9oQeqJdj_8R6z-md8/s1600/Screenshot+%252867%2529.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="918" data-original-width="1600" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf1Az-dz__YKw1Q75T8y96S4wABvqkN_WezLtA-O5lJZUq55HmSQzWgMF1LvBICXt_qXZWbamLwyVNH8iqVKhimifcLoH4gfrFQbK5deRxKfAGGO6puXqQqQ7iBG9oQeqJdj_8R6z-md8/s400/Screenshot+%252867%2529.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Either will result in executing the function from the .mcfunction file.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTFZ4johMbVrnpL7cVnJS8pPzicOy6GUyPp_roUpCsPb4FPSX5ui1Tplcmt4tHW4GnyLh-q0vRZWcG__BDIHEGQ73ErvAonpoPu0pE-TT8J5SWFZEZPXNw7uUZKNXkwwKE190Kxmf8X0o/s1600/function+executed.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="915" data-original-width="1600" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhTFZ4johMbVrnpL7cVnJS8pPzicOy6GUyPp_roUpCsPb4FPSX5ui1Tplcmt4tHW4GnyLh-q0vRZWcG__BDIHEGQ73ErvAonpoPu0pE-TT8J5SWFZEZPXNw7uUZKNXkwwKE190Kxmf8X0o/s400/function+executed.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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If you recall from above, the function was set to give the player a diamond sword, and diamond chestplate, build a class cube in the air (using the fill command) and summoning some mobs including an ender dragon.</div>
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Pretty cool, eh? Can you imagine all the incredible possibilities? What are you waiting for? Create and execute a function to create an arena with a bunch of mobs and teleport the player into the arena with a sword and armor to defend the honor of the king!!!</div>
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Games and Learninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10525760825218991948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6499226437419643396.post-55790641955865849052019-04-05T07:56:00.002-07:002019-04-05T07:56:54.558-07:00Should we allow Fortnite Creative as a Game Design Engine in school?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuEkwKS57iz_AfDmopwSasxoVkdTba_Spg_HideJxoisdFxA-aJzXNZSg-IKsfoVjJciTkZvvRKDS_iWdOttVNVf5mrSDPibZ9s_m7lkxfjt40YU7W5pQcBEPoFJVhuyVVVkaiKJWX8zU/s1600/b40cc1ef303c475d3ef2205cbcda30ad.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="234" data-original-width="416" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuEkwKS57iz_AfDmopwSasxoVkdTba_Spg_HideJxoisdFxA-aJzXNZSg-IKsfoVjJciTkZvvRKDS_iWdOttVNVf5mrSDPibZ9s_m7lkxfjt40YU7W5pQcBEPoFJVhuyVVVkaiKJWX8zU/s320/b40cc1ef303c475d3ef2205cbcda30ad.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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Many of you have been following our journey regarding the use of Fortnite Creative mode in my 8th grade game design classes. Essentially it started with the student question, "Can we use Fortnite Creative to make our game". I am a huge proponent of student choice and student voice. The stigma around fortnite leads me to believe that it should be cleared with our administration. The more research I've done the more I see how Fortnite Creative mode is no different from any other design tool. It really comes down to how you use it and what elements you include. I encouraged the students who asked to write to our administration for approval. I believe their argument below is well developed. <div>
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Dear *** ,<br /><br /><br />We are students in Mr. Isaacs period 4 game design class and we have received the task of creating our very own game for our final project. Mr. Isaacs said we could choose the tool of our choice like minecraft, unity, twine, super mario maker and almost anything we can think of. A couple of students asked if we could used Fortnite Creative, a section of Fortnite that is dedicated to building your own world. Mr Isaacs sees the value of using Fortnite Creative as a tool to create our game but wanted us to get approval from the school first. He suggests that students should get parent approval first in addition. <br /><br />There are many benefits of using Fortnite creative compared to other software like Minecraft. Fortnite creative saves your work to the cloud so you could access your work on any computer, video game console, or your even your phone, where on Minecraft your limited to only the computer your working on. In class we will only be working on a computer, but Fortnite allows us to work on our game at home, which will allow our final game to reach its full potential. Another advantage about Fortnite creative is that new things are added everyday and updates are released every week. This will allow us to constantly update our game and improve it. Since Fortnite creative is apart of Fortnite, our friends would have easy access to test and play our game anywhere they want. Mr. Isaacs has been researching this and found a number of educators using Fortnite creative in their classrooms. They have had good experiences with it and the students haven't needed to use any of the guns or questionable aspects that would be considered inappropriate for school, but mainly focused on all the creative possibilities like obstacle courses and other challenges like races. You can even make your own music note by note, which is a vital aspect for game design, One teacher named Mrs. Wright “used it as a student choice for the design and construction of a medieval castle” in her social studies class. Epic games, the creator of Fortnite also made Unreal Engine, a game creator for super high end games. They are trying to make Fortnite creative an easier to understand version of Unreal Engine (an entry point to using their more sophisticated tools), but for everyday people. Like Fortnite creative, every game design software has the possibility to input guns. This is not necessary and we realize that we need to ensure that our game is appropriate for school. The idea for our game is to make a ultimate obstacle course that uses only creative aspects of Fortnite creative and nothing violent, so anybody at any age can play it. <br /><br />We hope you understand that despite the stigma that fortnite has associated with it, we are asking to use Epic Games open ended tool as we would any other game design engine. Thank you for your consideration!<br /><br /><br />Sincerely, <br /><br /><br />*** and ***<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><br />
Here are some photos that show the amazing potential of this tool<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #f5f8fa; color: #14171a; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><img height="220" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/S7kMKi9yZOO8Ulzru20mbNaZVuCJ_pk27VqxwaqNW-uud1wrXHMbkq4rBHpXWNatZyPXSGyCw5aSwtxWCPMgefoyowTTifDdyMdSqTAlVaETihTThm2qs4dgkZ6haZVrpJFppn1m" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="392" /></span></div>
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<br /><br />Here is an example of someone making music in Fortnite creative game engine<br /><br /><b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /><br /><br /></b><br />
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<br /><br />A race track that someone made with Fortnite creative game engine<br /><br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: #f5f8fa; color: #14171a; font-family: Arial; font-size: 10.5pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap; white-space: pre;"><img height="216" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/Yv50IL9FJNpl3uzYPRJcKz70d5Rd1q6WsOP-eqPE2Ay_6Gwwuo5ULhSt3OsIzcAv1sTbwr80AMzXQsQdcLZvC6bRyY-2D8F7WCCdgTjoKPk02icN8_DwXHsae04nkyktm5U7Vq3_" style="border: none; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="383" /></span></div>
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<br /><br />A building someone created for their game using Fortnite Creative game engine</div>
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Games and Learninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10525760825218991948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6499226437419643396.post-30039581590381871802019-01-08T04:49:00.002-08:002019-01-08T04:49:18.925-08:00Student Reimagined Fairy Tales - Game Design and Digital Storytelling<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I am Isabella Masiero and I am interning for Mr.Isaacs in his game design and development class. This cycle I have been able to work with games that the students created on Minecraft. These games stood out to me more than others...<br />
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Click the game title link to download and try the game! These games were created using Minecraft: Education Edition. You will need M:EE to play them.</div>
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<a href="http://bit.ly/AlexM_Hansel_Gretel" target="_blank">Hansel and Gretel </a> </h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7Jvtqjvio261UiEOlP3OL4klIQsc5O9AZUmT6X8u1AgrnOpmFIvEIsvxZdnrGAR1VJisJoPBYVztcrJWwlKPpxuO8OGcbplHrMfebccP8PgivJyuebm1kwcfoxRnAsonMYX8fTzOG2xc/s1600/Screenshot+%25281%2529.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7Jvtqjvio261UiEOlP3OL4klIQsc5O9AZUmT6X8u1AgrnOpmFIvEIsvxZdnrGAR1VJisJoPBYVztcrJWwlKPpxuO8OGcbplHrMfebccP8PgivJyuebm1kwcfoxRnAsonMYX8fTzOG2xc/s400/Screenshot+%25281%2529.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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The first game that I chose was a game created by Alex. He created his own interpretation of the fairy tale Hansel and Gretel. You begin in Hansel's home where you discover that she has been taken by the evil witch. In the image above you can see where the adventures of the game begin and you enter the witches home. As you progress through the levels they increase in difficulty, and the addition of the story line aspect that gets revealed as you keep completing the levels keeps you on the edge of your seat and wanting more. After completing a number of levels you encounter "the witch" which is a wither that you must summon then defeat. The game ends when you encounter Hansel and free her from her prison.<br />
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<a href="http://bit.ly/myworldMC" target="_blank">The Three Llama</a></h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKaZZtxGYYZ6uSYSk-A0CKBKCgABjg4LdMGDdwVHhnAybyZIVdtDWVNNfXmoww7vBLQHKc16BQ_Vf7BZBdbfFF4ZHsAgHLcPobSml3JiGzp73tN9YF6fm2__kghlFXaEMRDiCJLnGfwLw/s1600/Screenshot+%25284%2529.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKaZZtxGYYZ6uSYSk-A0CKBKCgABjg4LdMGDdwVHhnAybyZIVdtDWVNNfXmoww7vBLQHKc16BQ_Vf7BZBdbfFF4ZHsAgHLcPobSml3JiGzp73tN9YF6fm2__kghlFXaEMRDiCJLnGfwLw/s400/Screenshot+%25284%2529.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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The Three Llamas is a spin off of the three little pigs created by Sydney and Alyssa. Throughout the game you venture from home to home as you complete missions that are meant to keep the llamas safe from the storm that is soon to come. The different missions increase in difficulty as you progress from llama house to llama house which in a way could be considered the different levels in the game. Along with getting harder as you complete the missions more of the map is accessible to you and you are allowed to continue through the story line. The game includes many parkour courses and an intricate underground maze. Once you complete the game the llamas will be safe from the storm and live happily ever after.</div>
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<a href="http://bit.ly/ryan_tommy_dylan" target="_blank">Sleeping Bu</a></h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvT3k3ObJ6G4KWsNBmRsgNYVHY6zIaDqUcOaKxjJyKGE6oHW0yT9qxOkYPxOSLugEYTYqH2QVP_vEhSTUsbcg8ggkJ42KMPXHhqpwMt4yW9CPX8Mjjl9MNeAMTCQoHxtAEl_cJG5ue6DA/s1600/Screenshot+%25285%2529.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvT3k3ObJ6G4KWsNBmRsgNYVHY6zIaDqUcOaKxjJyKGE6oHW0yT9qxOkYPxOSLugEYTYqH2QVP_vEhSTUsbcg8ggkJ42KMPXHhqpwMt4yW9CPX8Mjjl9MNeAMTCQoHxtAEl_cJG5ue6DA/s400/Screenshot+%25285%2529.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Ryan, Tommy, and Dylan created an adventure game that they names Sleeping Bu. This game consists of may levels that increase in difficulty as you progress through the game. There are levels that are parkour based such as the one seen above and others that are more geared towards memory, or the ability to make it though a complicated maze. The final goal of the game is to retrieve the princess that has been kidnapped and is stuck in a tower. There is a guide, Rylic, that help carry along the story line as you complete levels. The addition of this guide adds a very nice story aspect to the levels that are looped together by the task of retrieving the princess.</div>
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<a href="http://bit.ly/Beauty_Beast_MC" target="_blank">Beauty and the Beast</a></h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSJ0PjdXOI4LSSGIFeq7STXEmkDmpBMRjwPi-7wRjaAafHNgnnV5smc2NRGI4GfSR0vpMQUIpV9ocWC8eGSRvif1eyzY1twwlyJ7Y9zqgb3kE0vCdeVuPg1Qascl63TcFgZh4w2baLR0I/s1600/Screenshot+%25286%2529.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSJ0PjdXOI4LSSGIFeq7STXEmkDmpBMRjwPi-7wRjaAafHNgnnV5smc2NRGI4GfSR0vpMQUIpV9ocWC8eGSRvif1eyzY1twwlyJ7Y9zqgb3kE0vCdeVuPg1Qascl63TcFgZh4w2baLR0I/s400/Screenshot+%25286%2529.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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Beauty and the Beast is one of my all time favorite fairy tales so I was very exited to play this game, created by Mimi and Natalie, once I saw the title, and my expectations were quite high. I am happy to report that this game did not disappoint in the slightest and lived up to my fairy tale dreams. Each level of the game connected to the story in a very clear and throughout out way such as Lumiere's Lava Parkour featured above. This game is centered around the story line that Belle and the Beast are trapped in the castle by the towns people and you need to help them escape by making it through mazes, parkour courses and guessing games. This game is not only well though out but also is very well built and visually appealing. </div>
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<a href="http://bit.ly/rapunzel_rescue" target="_blank">Rapunzel's Rescue</a></h3>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivk6yLU8coT725XUVJnqFoHP4aHVbBR1Ug3KOeWoTmxWDzuP6ywwvfhyphenhyphenyTBU5CywCJdOmCGsurlWbYGYG8z4yeucMb2JvgwIUR33lTbYDGydz0v3_NY_90HctIFgGT5VhL9X9P7ACzvKk/s1600/Screenshot+%25287%2529.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivk6yLU8coT725XUVJnqFoHP4aHVbBR1Ug3KOeWoTmxWDzuP6ywwvfhyphenhyphenyTBU5CywCJdOmCGsurlWbYGYG8z4yeucMb2JvgwIUR33lTbYDGydz0v3_NY_90HctIFgGT5VhL9X9P7ACzvKk/s400/Screenshot+%25287%2529.png" width="400" /></a></div>
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In Rapunzel's Rescue, created by Stella and Sidney, the player takes on the roll of Rapunzel. The mission you are given is to rescue your friends that your parents have deemed "bad influences" and have trapped in a tower. As you progress though the game there are different levels to test you princess ability's such as the horse back riding course, a maze with many doors, and a tower you need to climb. This game was very fun to play and challenging at points. After reaching the tower you can save your princess friends and return to live your normal life. This game is extremely well built and is really well thought out. </div>
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Games and Learninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10525760825218991948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6499226437419643396.post-14696805215212781422018-05-29T06:39:00.000-07:002018-05-29T06:39:00.975-07:00Legends of Learning: An Ambitious Game Based Learning Platform for Science Education<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Note: This is a sponsored blog post for Legends of Learning.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I've been following the work of Legends of Learning from the start. They have developed a very interesting ecosystem (no pun intended) for Games to teach Science concepts. Legends of Learning essentially opened up their platform for developers to create and publish science games to teach to specific science standards. Games can be reviewed and rated by both Students and Teachers. I love this idea as it provides an opportunity for good games to rise to the top while not so good games won't survive. I suppose we could teach Darwinism through this vetting process.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Anyone who knows me knows that I am a strong proponent of game based learning and a critic of game based learning done poorly. I tend to favor the use of commercial games in school but would definitely LOVE to see more commercial quality games that are intended for learning. Often, however, games for learning often fall victim to the over used "chocolate covered broccoli" fate and serve more as a digital worksheet than a game.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">There are certainly games for learning that are quite promising in terms of maintaining the balance of commercial quality and impact for learning. One prime example is Eco, by StrangeLoop Games.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Eco was built from the ground up as a commercial (AAA) quality game intended for use in the classroom (and beyond). Eco is a multiplayer game that tasks you with maintaining a sustainable environment while achieving the goal of saving the world from being destroyed. This destruction would be the fault of the humans (the players of the game). Sounds like a worthwhile objective to me! The game is a Global Survival Game that involves the players in gathering resources, building, farming, hunting, etc. There is a political element as well where players can propose laws and the other players vote to pass or deny the laws, further impacting the game-play. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Back to Legends of Learning. I love that the Legends team has recruited educators and students to help inform the process through the rating system and their ambassador program. There is a very active community of educators that participate in the forums and provide feedback to the team and directly to the developers. Most of the educators are Science Teachers. Some are game based learning enthusiasts while others are new to game based learning and being introduced to GBL through the Legends of Learning platform. This comes with it's pluses and minuses. On one hand, educators are bringing games into the classroom which is wonderful. On another hand, some may be happy bringing a 'game' that plays like a quiz with a mini game as a reward and assuming this is a good example of game based learning. This begs an important question. Is a quiz based game that teaches a concept followed by a mini game that allows the player to run and jump in a short mario type level better (or more engaging) than learning from a text book? Perhaps, but should we expect more? The argument most GBL purists would raise is that the learning should be embedded in the game play. Many games that are created for learning serve more like a digital worksheet and from a Game Based Learning standpoint there is a very significant difference. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Legends of Learning is working hard to create a niche in terms of bite size games that teach isolated concepts based on Science standards.This is a noble effort and hopefully it will be successful over time. The clear benefit is that teachers can pick and choose activities that aim to address specific learning outcomes. Within the platform, teachers can see the ratings, game description, and the type of game (quiz, instructional game, simulation, etc.). Teachers can create playlists to provide a number of games for their students to play through. The system collects data based on student performance. All of these elements speak well to the educator trying to bring games into their classroom while feeling confident that the game is covering the intended learning outcome. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I've played many of the games and some have merit as a game to teach the concept while others feel very much like a quiz followed by an unrelated minigame as a reward. My hope is that educators and students will continue to examine the games on the platform with a critical eye to ensure that truly meaningful games rise to the top. I will say that I've heard from many educators that they have enjoyed bringing the Legends of Learning games into their classroom. Likewise, the games have been met with a shared enthusiasm by the students. I would love to try some of the games that have been highly regarded. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Earlier this year I began an effort focusing on the theme "What Kids Say About Games...And Can We Listen" based on the #SXSWEdu session I was presenting with Matthew Farber, Susanna Pollock, and Louise Dube. It has been a great project and I plan to continue having students exercise Student Voice through Game Reviews. Who better to speak to the quality of these games than students, right? I teach game design and development so my students look at games through the lens of a beta tester / game developer. They have been taught to analyze games based on the merits of commercial games. As such, there can certainly be a bit of a bias as they are playing commercial games and comparing these games to those. While that may be a bias, I think it is valid that they should demand a level of quality from the games that are brought into their learning environment. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">On to some of the student Reviews. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Rebecca, an 8th grader in my Game Design and Development course reviewed <b>Angry Contraptions</b>:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Today we played games from Legends of Learning and they were very educational. </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Storyline/Engaging:</strong>There wasn't really a storyline for the games. More of just a hit the target games but it was very addicting and I wanted to keep playing until I beat the level. I probably would not play it outside of school though. </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Learning:</strong>The goal of the game is to teach students about the laws of motion in a fun yet educational way. There are questions along the way to engage the mind and retain knowledge. </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Fun Factor:</strong>The game was lacking a bit of the fun meter. I felt like I was learning a lot more than most games and the game was also frustrating when the balls would stop moving just before the level would have been completed </span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box;">Overall:</strong>The game was a very simple and educational game and I think it would be useful for those who are just learning this topic</span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Seamus shared his thoughts on <b>Tower Puzzle:</b></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #757575; font-size: 15px;"> In Legends of learning, the mini game I was playing was Tower Puzzle. It was my favorite out of all of the games, because I liked the feature of when the player completes the questions, and get to try to get the ball to reach the bottom. There is no story line for this game, the premise is just answer the questions to get coins, and get the ball to the bottom.</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #757575; font-size: 15px;"> For the entertaining part, I would not play it outside of school, because my type of games do not fit into the category of education, and was not having fun while playing this game. It is a good learning game for kids though, and I support it. I also think that this mini game is about learning and not about coins, and by that I mean that there is some though provoking questions that influence the education part.</span> </span></blockquote>
Andrew had some interesting thoughts on playing through Selective Farming, a game that has elements of a money management game mixed with learning about genetics:<br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #757575; font-family: "roboto" , sans-serif; font-size: 15px;">I found the game very fun, breeding animals to get better traits while also trying to earn a certain amount of money. The game would've been a lot better in my opinion if you could continue playing after you reach your goal. You start your farm with some cows and cauliflower, you can breed these to get better traits so they are worth more money to sell. You can also buy more things to breed so they can be sold to get out of debt.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #757575; font-family: "roboto" , sans-serif; font-size: medium;">Teaching:</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #757575; font-family: "roboto" , sans-serif; font-size: 15px;">The game teaches players about genetics and artificial selection through the tutorial. It then lets them experiment with this and do it themselves in a simulation to see the potential benefits and consequences.</span></blockquote>
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Anthony also shares his thoughts on Selective Farming:<br />
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Legends of Learning Review</blockquote>
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In the past I have always enjoyed learning from games rather then using a textbook. "Legends of Learning" gives children the opportunity to learn via computer games.<br />
In the first game, I was tasked with creating a profitable farm in order to pay off my Grandfathers debt. Their were message boxes to explain cross-breeding which was the lesson. My farm started with 2 cows and a garden of cauliflower. I had to breed the cows in order to make a better one. Then I could sell one of the original cows. Repeating this process over time increased my profit and price per bucket of milk. The same concept applies to the cauliflower.<br />
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Overall I really enjoyed learning this way. I felt I really understood the lesson being taught. I would definitely love to learn using games in the future. </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Kieren writes a very thoughtful review about <a href="http://kierangamedesign.blogspot.com/2018/05/review-of-legends-of-learning.html" target="_blank">Selective Farming</a> as well. Definitely worth the read!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">Another one of my 8th graders, Sophia, shares <a href="http://sophiagamedesignportfolio.blogspot.com/2018/05/legends-of-learning-selective-farming.html" target="_blank">her thoughts</a> about the game Selective Farming. It is interesting to see her perspective regarding the gameplay not really teaching any content and her feelings about the game in general.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">To read more of my student's game reviews, please check out the <a href="https://www.pinterest.com/stevei2071/legends-of-learning-student-written-game-reviews/" target="_blank">Legends of Learning Game Review Pinterest board</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">To provide a little more context, I chose a different science standard for each of my three 8th grade game development classes and created a playlist based on the standard. I would like to see more flexibility in the play list feature as I did find that I wanted to add games from different learning objectives and would have liked for students to have the ability to move around through the play list on their own or even explore the games on the platform without needing them to be 'prescribed' by the teacher.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "arial" , "helvetica" , sans-serif;">I hope you enjoy the student reviews. I really think we owe it to the children we serve to embrace their feedback and listen to them. I hope the developers of these games and Legends of Learning see this as valuable feedback to incorporate moving forward. </span><br />
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Games and Learninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10525760825218991948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6499226437419643396.post-29543725366788499412017-10-31T09:55:00.003-07:002017-10-31T09:55:35.050-07:00An UPDATED peek into my Game Design and Development Program<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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A number of years ago a member of my PLN, Justin (<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; font-size: 13.2px;"><a href="http://www.twitter.com/techucation" target="_blank">@techucation</a> on twitter)</span>, had a few questions about my Game Design and Development class. I took it as an opportunity to share what I've been up to with a global audience in the initial "<a href="http://gamesandlearning1.blogspot.com/2012/11/a-peek-into-my-video-game-design-and.html" target="_blank">Peek into my Video Game Design and Development Program</a>" post. Looking back, I see that I posted that in 2012. Now, several years and several iterations of the course later, a similar question was raised. This time it was fellow educator, David W. Deeds (<a href="http://twitter.com/dwdeeds">@dwdeeds</a> on twitter). Take a look at the initial post. This post will reiterate on some, but otherwise take off from where the last post left off.<br />
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David asked about my curriculum as well as a list of products / resources I have available for my students. I will start by saying that my class as well as my epic learning space has evolved over a number (ten plus) years. I believe it could serve as a great model for others interested in creating a similar program and I am happy to chat as I believe there should be more opportunities for kids to learn based on their interest / passion and for many games is at the center of their universe. Furthermore, the game design industry is HUGE and rivals (perhaps has even surpassed) the movie industry. There are many opportunities for students to pursue a career in game design and development. The roles within the industry are quite diverse including graphic design and animation, programming, 3d modeling, sound engineering, storytelling, marketing, advertising, game testing, and so much more. My goal has been to provide a choice (Quest) based learning environment modeled after a <a href="http://gamesandlearning1.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-evolution-of-game-dev-studio.html" target="_blank">game studio</a> in order to allow students to find and nurture their niche within a game design team. The blog post, "<a href="http://gamesandlearning1.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-evolution-of-game-dev-studio.html" target="_blank">Evolution of a Game Design Studio</a>" will provide some insight into the ideas related to the learning space as well as the resources that we have brought into the space to provide many options for students to take learning into their own hands.<br />
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For a number of years I used 3dgamelab (<a href="http://www.3dgamelab.org/">http://www.3dgamelab.org</a>) as my quest based learning management system. Within 3dgamelab you can create quest lines for students to pursue and set prerequisites needed to unlock other quests / quest lines. Students earn XP for successfully completing quests. Once submitted, I review their quest and either approve it or provide feedback so that they can improve upon it and resubmit it. I have coined the phrase "iterative grading" for this model. The beauty is that it provides a great vehicle to create a valuable feedback loop between the student and the teacher. From a philosophical standpoint, I value learning, not grades, so for me allowing a student to keep improving until they are successful is much more effective than accepting something, giving a grade (whether or not the child can demonstrate their learning) and moving on. The choice based model lends well to this because I am not trying to wrangle an entire class through a curriculum that is time sensitive or group paced. In the end, grades (again, not a fan really) are based on student accomplishments related directly to the quests they complete.<br />
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Recently, I moved over to ClassCraft (<a href="http://www.classcraft.com/">http://www.classcraft.com</a>). I love the classcraft team and have been hassling Devin to add a quest based component to the platform as that is without question the most important aspect of gamification to me. I love the idea of earning XP and all of the other elements that turn the class into a game, but choice based learning is at the center of my course, so this was a must. Devin and I had met a few times and his team recently launched a beta of the integration of Quests and they did a beautiful job incorporating quests into the platform.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAa9B-cgDLabUordvQG7OMH4u5MtitlFkyfqWdCpAz9HZ6ogWkwy_3KaKsH1KBLhE2aa5QeSWutcwQxp8bFJBIp1IvBF5TaG9gDnL7iLIpbqcL6w05b3Ni6uQHrpcVCfyb8eNXRsYr-6k/s1600/teacherview_questline_classcraft.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="711" data-original-width="1408" height="322" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjAa9B-cgDLabUordvQG7OMH4u5MtitlFkyfqWdCpAz9HZ6ogWkwy_3KaKsH1KBLhE2aa5QeSWutcwQxp8bFJBIp1IvBF5TaG9gDnL7iLIpbqcL6w05b3Ni6uQHrpcVCfyb8eNXRsYr-6k/s640/teacherview_questline_classcraft.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Teacher view of the quest building area within ClassCraft. When Kids enter any quest line, fog of war is in effect so students can only see the quests available to them (i.e. they may just see the starting quest and once complete other quest(s) are unlocked and they can see them. This works great in terms of ensuring that the view is not overwhelming for the student.</td></tr>
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ClassCraft allows you to share your quest lines and I am happy to share so essentially all of my lesson plans are available for others to import and use as is or 'remix'.<br />
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Here are links to my current quest lines in ClassCraft. I am interested to see if the links automatically update as I add quests to each quest area as my course is always evolving with additional learning opportunities for students. In fact, I still need to import quite a bit from 3dgamelab so that all my quests are available to my students in ClassCraft:<br />
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<li>Journey to the Center of the Game:<br /><a href="https://game.classcraft.com/import/quest/WtxzuFeaqrCKRab2G">https://game.classcraft.com/import/quest/WtxzuFeaqrCKRab2G</a><br />This quest line has students explore a variety of game genres and write game reviews to analyze game mechanics, storyline, and other game elements as they start to learn about game design experientially. These quests lead to opportunities for students to create games based on the genres being explored, thus containing much of the real meat of the course.</li>
<li>To the Mines:<br /><a href="https://game.classcraft.com/import/quest/wBfuvvRa2q6zSgD4T">https://game.classcraft.com/import/quest/wBfuvvRa2q6zSgD4T</a><br />This quest line focuses on quests involving Minecraft (primarily Minecraft: Education Edition). Students explore tools within the game, design and build redstone contraptions, and create games using Minecraft.</li>
<li>Real, Virtual, or Virtually Real:<br /><a href="https://game.classcraft.com/import/quest/RoGYGK4yqFoLNPtoP">https://game.classcraft.com/import/quest/RoGYGK4yqFoLNPtoP</a><br />This quest line will grow quite a bit, but it coincides with research on VR in the classroom that my class is participating in with <a href="http://foundry10.org/" target="_blank">foundry10</a>, an education foundation in Seattle that is researching non-traditional approaches to learning. With regards to VR, my students explore VR on the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and PlaystationVR. They write game reviews and create content for others to explore in Virtual Reaality.</li>
<li>If you think it, you can code it:<br /><a href="https://game.classcraft.com/import/quest/dDWGE6ccpE5jXWgyf">https://game.classcraft.com/import/quest/dDWGE6ccpE5jXWgyf</a><br />I love to present kids with opportunities to learn to code and there are so many avenues they can take in a self paced manner. This quest line features <a href="http://code.org/">code.org</a>, <a href="https://www.codecademy.com/" target="_blank">Codecademy</a>, and Codebuilder for #MinecraftEdu currently. This will expand greatly as I import quests related to Code Kingdom, Khan Academy, and further develop the Code Builder opportunities. Interestingly, the codecademy quset line has grown primarily because one student keeps plowing through the quests and moves on independently and then provides me with the content I should include to add the new quests. Nothing like students co-creating lessons!!</li>
</ul>
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As I mentioned, there will be additional quests added as I fully move over to ClassCraft, but the new quest lines are growing organically as the kids are ready for new content.</div>
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Following is a list of resources I have made available to my students. Special thanks to our school PTO for their contributions of the large flat screen TVs and the yogibo furniture! Many of the other resources came from crowd funding (<a href="https://www.donorschoose.org/mr.isaacs?projects=true" target="_blank">donors choose</a>), foundry 10 (as part of the VR research) and activity funds from our game club. In addition to my courses, I am the adviser for a VERY active after school game club. That's another conversation entirely but we are looking to bring casual and competitive gaming into more schools and create an exciting program that can connect schools for multiplayer gaming, tournaments, leagues, etc.<br />
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Resources (hardware and software used):<br />
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<ul style="text-align: left;">
<li>HTC Vive</li>
<li>Oculus Rift</li>
<li>PlaystationVR</li>
<li>Sony Playstation 4 with a variety of VR games</li>
<li>Xbox 360</li>
<li>Xbox One</li>
<li>Nintendo WiiU</li>
<li>Nintendo Switch</li>
<li>3 large flat screen TVs (2 mounted on back wall, 1 mounted on front wall)</li>
<li>Blue Yeti Microphone and Logitech Webcam (for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEOSFf4mB_xm1N_n-g-GFrQ" target="_blank">class and game club youtube channel</a>)</li>
<li><a href="http://store.steampowered.com/" target="_blank">Steam </a>with a library of games for game club and VR games for the VR research</li>
<li><a href="http://yoyogames.com/" target="_blank">GameMaker Studio 2.0</a></li>
<li><a href="http://gamestarmechanic.com/" target="_blank">Gamestar Mechanic</a></li>
<li>Minecraft</li>
<li><a href="http://www.rpgmakerweb.com/" target="_blank">RPG Maker</a> (XV Ace and MV)</li>
<li>Mario Maker (for WiiU)</li>
<li>Portal 2 with level editor</li>
<li><a href="https://www.polygon.com/2017/4/19/15354716/starcraft-free-download-pc-mac" target="_blank">Starcraft</a> with level editor (completely FREE now) </li>
<li><a href="http://twinery.org/" target="_blank">Twine</a> - great for writing Interactive Fiction / Text Based Adventures</li>
<li><a href="http://codecademy.com/" target="_blank">Codecademy</a></li>
<li><a href="http://code.org/">code.org</a></li>
<li><a href="https://codecombat.com/" target="_blank">Code Combat</a></li>
<li><a href="https://store.unity.com/education" target="_blank">Unity 3d</a> - FREE for education!</li>
<li>and so much more (including whatever else the kids bring to the mix)</li>
</ul>
</div>
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Please check out our <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEOSFf4mB_xm1N_n-g-GFrQ" target="_blank">Game Design WAMS class youtube channel</a> (hit that subscribe button while you're there!) and our <a href="http://pinterest.com/stevei2071" target="_blank">showcase of student work on pinterest</a>. You will find many games created by students, redstone contraptions, tutorials, game walk-throughs, reviews, and much more!<br />
<br />Thanks for reading :)<br />
<br /></div>
Games and Learninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10525760825218991948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6499226437419643396.post-24354411620890903752017-10-26T10:01:00.003-07:002017-10-30T11:00:30.604-07:00Minefaire and Minecraft Education Edition: Perfect Together!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Minefaire, Philly took place on October 14-15 at the Greater Philadelphia Expo Center in Oaks, PA. Before the general public (over 13,000 in total) arrived, the first day of the event kicked off with a special three hour event exclusively for educators. This FREE event was co-sponsored by the Minecraft Education Edition team and included breakfast for attendees and three hours of learning about how Minecraft is (and can be) used in Education.<br />
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The idea behind the event was to bring educators together to connect and learn together while growing the community of educators interested in using Minecraft in Schools. Over 30 attendees and 6 global minecraft mentors participated. The participants were able to meet mentors from around the world including Marco Vigelini (all the way from Italy!), Ben Spieldenner from Ohio, Sean Arnold from New York, and Mark Grundel, Steve Isaacs, and Cathy Cheo-Isaacs all hailing from New Jersey. Educators were able to hear from each of the mentors who led the three hour event. Steve introduced Minecraft Education Edition, Mark taught the educators how to play, Ben took the educators through a sample lesson that he created and Cathy introduced the new code builder for Minecraft. The other mentors as well as a number of students and other educators supported the event to help the educators and answer questions about the value of Minecraft in Education.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXyZwHQK2Jq_vGMXO0D8ymFgg8N27l54oDPK90b6-CJJB1chCsZuaSL0CNueBezkHdLHPNtXRdkq7NthNWHPFbiyvs9Jyq7GM8uk883Bb6yIsamBbjpoavZnVsr8Pk9LaEWS3tOmBdyww/s1600/codebuilder+with+cathy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXyZwHQK2Jq_vGMXO0D8ymFgg8N27l54oDPK90b6-CJJB1chCsZuaSL0CNueBezkHdLHPNtXRdkq7NthNWHPFbiyvs9Jyq7GM8uk883Bb6yIsamBbjpoavZnVsr8Pk9LaEWS3tOmBdyww/s320/codebuilder+with+cathy.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgivIVTIEd06TP27tp3su-AzBWYsihTn1X8aVWkIPQvIfUYWYaW07Mszyt-ydrfmcTrNmNSm_uCVCV3kBxNDZVxyF0illtDI1wJWEB6AzsdXaT8B1c4y49uLwbucr8A6hMByemD1amCYmY/s1600/edu+event+ben.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1200" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgivIVTIEd06TP27tp3su-AzBWYsihTn1X8aVWkIPQvIfUYWYaW07Mszyt-ydrfmcTrNmNSm_uCVCV3kBxNDZVxyF0illtDI1wJWEB6AzsdXaT8B1c4y49uLwbucr8A6hMByemD1amCYmY/s320/edu+event+ben.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="320" /></a>Mentor Ben Spieldenner shared, "The Minefaire PD was empowering for teachers and for Mentors. It was exciting to have conversations about creating immersive educational experiences". And to go a bit cooler yet, Ben's daughter Bella who was one of the kids who was happy to help the teachers learn commented, "I actually got to interact WITH teachers...that never happens!" There's nothing we love more than having kids help out in the learning lab. Anyone who has ever played Minecraft knows that they are the experts and best teachers!<br />
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Justin Aglio, Director of Innovation (K-12) for the Montour School District in Pittsburgh shared, "As a school administrator, I left Pittsburgh at 3:00 AM on Saturday morning to attend the Educator event and volunteer at Minefaire, Philly. I arrived in Philadelphia at 8:00 am and entered Minefaire. By 5:00 PM I realized that I did not eat or drink anything since I left Pittsburgh because I was so engaged with the learning culture of MinecraftEdu, Overall, I was not only impressed with the learning potentioal of MinecraftEDU, but I was more impressed with the people including the Minecraft Mentors' enthusiasm of unlocking brilliance for all children." We are happy to report that Justin did not suffer from dehydration nor starve to death. We did make sure to keep him fed and hydrated on day 2 of Minefaire :)<br />
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Michelle King also made the road trip from Pittsburgh. Michelle participated in the educator event and stuck around to help out in the learning lab for the entire weekend. Michelle is an incredible educator and an even more incredible human being. It was wonderful to have her join us for the weekend! She shared, "Minefaire has captured the essence of what's beautiful about humanity -- a reminder that we love to be in community and sharing what we love." I love this quote as it speaks directly to the vision of creating a space for educators to come and spend time together while learning with and from one another. Not to mention the amazing bond found among game based learning and in this case more specifically Minecraft educators.<br />
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Marco Vigelini from Italy was able to present at the event and also took to the diamond stage to share a new Minecraft map of Florence, Italy. It's a beautiful map that you can check out here:<br />
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<center><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Florence?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Florence</a> ... the entire city ... in <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/minecraft?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#minecraft</a> !!! <a href="https://twitter.com/Minecraft?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@minecraft</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/vubui?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@vubui</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/LydiaWinters?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@LydiaWinters</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/MarshDavies?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@MarshDavies</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/jeb_?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@jeb_</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Bopogamel?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Bopogamel</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/dearkarim?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@dearkarim</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/Chupacaubrey?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Chupacaubrey</a> <a href="https://t.co/mwN16PSRhO">pic.twitter.com/mwN16PSRhO</a></div>
— Marco Vigelini (@MarcoVigelini) <a href="https://twitter.com/MarcoVigelini/status/919543247638351872?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 15, 2017</a></blockquote>
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Marco added, "It was a way to learn easily and deeper from each other" to reflect on his thoughts on the Minefaire Experience.<br />
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Educators who attended this free event were invited to stay to take in all that Minefaire has to offer as our guests for the day. It became pretty clear to the attendees what a true phenomenon Minecraft is as they witnessed the droves of people entering the Expo Center as those with VIP passes entered followed by those with General Admission.<br />
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The learning opportunities did not end with the 3 hour workshop. The entire weekend featured:<br />
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<li>hands on workshops in the learning lab</li>
<li>20 minute presentations on the Inspiration Stage</li>
<li>Build Battles</li>
<li>YouTube Q&A panels throughout the day</li>
<li>A costume contest on the Diamond Stage</li>
<li>YouTube Meet and Greets. </li>
<li>A cardboard challenge where attendees built a huge physical minecraft world with cardboard</li>
<li>learning how to code in Python and other languages in Minecraft</li>
<li>and so much more!</li>
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Games and Learninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10525760825218991948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6499226437419643396.post-75651310598051629932017-06-12T09:00:00.001-07:002017-06-12T09:00:30.185-07:00Guest Blog Post: Grounds of Grey Completed Game Reflection<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_a7mAznBYMU1a-tsPoDwMSrTVPjquzZKZko5_ZgZNz1Jqs8uV1JfAMi2BaWixkVjrAZHA-BIB_70S0NcyiPVYOxnb3pJ-LTS7esERApJXmZMnuDEFbzCi5hAVP0iMBQnpR0L86iWUEIA/s1600/MAIN+1.PNG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_a7mAznBYMU1a-tsPoDwMSrTVPjquzZKZko5_ZgZNz1Jqs8uV1JfAMi2BaWixkVjrAZHA-BIB_70S0NcyiPVYOxnb3pJ-LTS7esERApJXmZMnuDEFbzCi5hAVP0iMBQnpR0L86iWUEIA/s320/MAIN+1.PNG" width="280" /></a><br />
The levels increase in difficulty so that there are not too many levels that are easy. It's interesting to see how people react to some of the more difficult parts and then how they react when they get past it. My intention from creating the game was to make people want to keep playing and finish the game. IT has been an interesting experience to be able to do just that.<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEk5ybF1-_P4Fv93xPRpt8FaXjBsA5Zlw-D1ddgZGpYr2Uzi_EgEGF4xZ8EGOOy___jb4xaxDuzQAM2JKQh6fl1T4Z6S9wJR5WYGltYhnXO5G4xiXQsEwacarla_bKjoVzF04YpkkvVuc/s1600/MAIN+2.PNG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="239" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEk5ybF1-_P4Fv93xPRpt8FaXjBsA5Zlw-D1ddgZGpYr2Uzi_EgEGF4xZ8EGOOy___jb4xaxDuzQAM2JKQh6fl1T4Z6S9wJR5WYGltYhnXO5G4xiXQsEwacarla_bKjoVzF04YpkkvVuc/s320/MAIN+2.PNG" width="320" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuPcKpz-rz9I6BbSUrZ5oHlWKXTU_l5iW9x5xlPl13WWbMyYSVfyjetxn7JIUophfdZIW7-mueyWU617aaq3fP5z6Z34c2PRahd6aEINiB1_DyOuEaEXcUzkDI7cR5TcEpXrj42JzEbGo/s1600/THING+1.PNG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="252" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuPcKpz-rz9I6BbSUrZ5oHlWKXTU_l5iW9x5xlPl13WWbMyYSVfyjetxn7JIUophfdZIW7-mueyWU617aaq3fP5z6Z34c2PRahd6aEINiB1_DyOuEaEXcUzkDI7cR5TcEpXrj42JzEbGo/s320/THING+1.PNG" width="320" /></a><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5KellCuPFFdGQ1wcAjFSta8L-evOcdwv5QvjeI7beBpnJ8j2ammcNw5t6COOTZgbhDXtdILc88Vu9CX5T_lQ2yQU5bsWZVwm6VF6KNrmiZROOCH7lhOL1Q5vNK5q0tNKO0xCWaXKeG8U/s1600/MAIN+3.PNG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="252" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5KellCuPFFdGQ1wcAjFSta8L-evOcdwv5QvjeI7beBpnJ8j2ammcNw5t6COOTZgbhDXtdILc88Vu9CX5T_lQ2yQU5bsWZVwm6VF6KNrmiZROOCH7lhOL1Q5vNK5q0tNKO0xCWaXKeG8U/s320/MAIN+3.PNG" width="320" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwe_jr7cX_COZLOrsjbpt_X9xKHgcIZafqhEpQOxWM7bwC0bO7JxlBvT6Q3jaYsF_ieSQKy7KHjraoDtv-eWINaeRR-rwrjB7dA-17Ou65wfVCzc_wT8ib-wEUsBYUDjH0nIQmqqp8icg/s1600/MAIN+4.PNG" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" height="264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwe_jr7cX_COZLOrsjbpt_X9xKHgcIZafqhEpQOxWM7bwC0bO7JxlBvT6Q3jaYsF_ieSQKy7KHjraoDtv-eWINaeRR-rwrjB7dA-17Ou65wfVCzc_wT8ib-wEUsBYUDjH0nIQmqqp8icg/s320/MAIN+4.PNG" width="320" /></a><br />
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Click here to play my game: <a href="https://gamestarmechanic.com/game/player/7275675">https://gamestarmechanic.com/game/player/7275675</a><br />
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Games and Learninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10525760825218991948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6499226437419643396.post-43645814968967705022017-03-05T16:20:00.001-08:002017-03-06T09:57:21.853-08:00#EdTechBridge Done Right: Legends of Learning<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I've been interested in working with EdTech companies for years. I have always appreciated the EdTech companies that seek and value teacher and student input when it comes to product development. This passion led me to working with Katya Hott from E-Line Media and then Brainpop, two companies that I have had wonderful experiences collaborating wit /h. Together we founded #EdTechBridge to address the important issue of the culture gap that appeared to exist among EdTech stakeholders. It was apparent that Educators wanted to work with EdTech companies and vice versa, but these groups often had trouble developing and nurturing relationships. Our goal was to build and facilitate a community that set out to help bridge this gap.<br />
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In many cases these relationships formed and often this leads to the development of ambassador programs that provide opportunities for educators and edtech companies to really deepen these opportunities to work together. The best case studies start with authentic relationships. A few successful ambassador programs that immediately come to mind include the <a href="https://educators.brainpop.com/certified-brainpop-educator-program/" target="_blank">Brainpop Certified Educator Program</a>, <a href="https://www.commonsense.org/education/certified" target="_blank">Common Sense Media: EdTech Mentors</a> and the <a href="http://meenoorami.org/uncategorized/minecraft-in-the-classroom-via-teachingchannel/" target="_blank">Minecraft Mentor Program</a>.<br />
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<b>Along comes Legends of Learning...</b><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqenCTlpxkDxU_VXO4wVA3n1ayvI8lcZ3c53xvdsxJmA8Dd2-tzJhckgVVy3Wca8HWcbqcjLd8c3XrcFY8NY4VY7yne-ukL5jLq2GImMes2BlOyMeGW04cCHPG8OusKyy_wXUL-3Lwqas/s1600/games.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqenCTlpxkDxU_VXO4wVA3n1ayvI8lcZ3c53xvdsxJmA8Dd2-tzJhckgVVy3Wca8HWcbqcjLd8c3XrcFY8NY4VY7yne-ukL5jLq2GImMes2BlOyMeGW04cCHPG8OusKyy_wXUL-3Lwqas/s320/games.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
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Over the past year or so I got to know <a href="https://twitter.com/aryah_fradkin" target="_blank">Aryah Fradkin</a>. We developed a relationship as I like to... through twitter chats. Aryah became a regular in both the #EdTechBridge and #Games4Ed chats, the two chats I am most involved in. The thing I like most about twitter and twitter chats is that we start to find like minded people and develop true friendships through interactions. Aryah and I quickly became friends as we have many common interests and very aligned ideas regarding education and EdTech. As is often the case, our conversations went from online interaction to emails, phone calls, and more.<br />
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I met with Aryah and Legends of Learning CMO, Geoff Livingston. We discussed the idea of involving teachers in the process. I am always sure to impress upon the importance of ensuring that educators feel valued in the process. It quickly became apparent that Aryah and Geoff completely understood this.<br />
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As we talked, Aryah and Geoff shared the vision of Vadim, the CEO and founder of <a href="http://legendsoflearning.com/" target="_blank">Legends of Learning</a>. Vadim is a research scientist by training and brings great experiences to the development space in terms of iterative design, and often building by trial and error. He has a solid background in using data to improve a hyptothesis and make it stick.<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif;">
<i>Dr. Vadim Polikov recently founded and is serving as CEO of Legends of Learning, a game-based learning company dedicated to improving the way we learn to function in the technologically driven society of the future. He started Legends of Learning to create solutions to the current education challenges facing the United States.</i></blockquote>
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<i>Prior to starting Legends of Learning, Vadim started and sold two companies for more than $50 million each. Vadim received a B.S. and a PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University. He has two boys and one girl, and his favorite superhero is Batman.</i><span style="background-color: transparent;"> </span></blockquote>
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Initially, I had no idea how expansive their vision was! I figured they were planning on putting out a few science games and wanted to reach out to several teachers for feedback. Early on, Aryah asked if I had some science teachers in mind. I gladly connected him with a few great science teachers in my building.<br />
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Well... clearly the Legends of Learning team had much bigger plans than I imagined! One day I received an email inviting educators to get involved and become ambassadors. The email indicated that Legends of Learning was going to take 50 (yes you read that right) ambassadors to ISTE in San Antonio as a thank you for their hard work and involvement in helping to shape the development of Science games to positively impact learning.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Legends of Learning is creating an amazing ambassador program, including educators in every<br />
step of the process. If that wasn't enough... they're bringing 50 ambassadors to ISTE in San Antonio</td></tr>
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This was interesting because often ambassador programs look for educators already actively using the product. Legends of Learning took a very different approach. They understood that they needed to recruit educators from the very beginning. They created a program including hundreds of educators spanning every area of the science curriculum. In addition, they contracted a number of game developers to create games based on suggestions and feedback from the educators. When I first entered the Ambassador community I was overwhelmed initially. There were discussions based on hundreds of different learning objectives that Legends of Learning is aiming to hit through their vast selection of games being developed. The overall idea is to create a repository of science games that are bite sized and teach to specific learning objectives. This will allow educators to build playlists of games and integrate them within the existing curriculum. This addresses an age old issue in game based learning where games often are seen as taking away from valuable teaching time as teachers race to complete the curriculum. The Legends of Learning approach addresses this issue beautifully.<br />
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If you are an ambassador you know that the discussion boards are quite active and the direct interaction with the developers has been a key component from the start. Games are starting to launch in beta which will continue to allow educators to further shape the development through continuous feedback and iteration.<br />
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I am so happy to see this authentic approach to EdTechBridge collaboration by bringing educators, students, and developers together from the beginning and through every phase of development.<br />
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Kudos to the Legends of Learning team. You've demonstrated #EdTechBridge done right!<br />
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Aryah and Geoff will be co-moderating the #EdTechBridge chat on March 29th at 7pm ET. We hope you can join us!<br />
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For more information, please check out the following:<br />
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<li><a href="http://www.legendsoflearning.com/" target="_blank">Legends of Learning</a></li>
<li><a href="https://soundcloud.com/user-842384555" target="_blank">The Legends of Learning Podcast</a> - great conversations with great influencers in #gbl</li>
<li><a href="https://www.legendsoflearning.com/blog/" target="_blank">The Legends of Learning Blog</a></li>
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Games and Learninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10525760825218991948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6499226437419643396.post-77938887464941134292017-01-14T18:44:00.000-08:002017-01-23T05:57:24.032-08:00Leveraging Student Voice: Showcasing student work to an authentic audience<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Our goal for students is for them to demonstrate their learning. Student expertise should be celebrated and shared. I have become increasingly interested in how students learn in informal settings. Minecraft serves as a perfect example. The game comes with no instruction manual. Who knew how brilliant that would be! Essentially, all of the content for this game is user generated.<br />
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The official <a href="http://minecraft.gamepedia.com/Minecraft_Wiki" target="_blank">minecraft wiki</a> contains over 5,000 articles and close to 11,000 files all contributed by members of the minecraft user community. When you do a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=minecraft" target="_blank">youtube search with the query minecraft</a> it yields a modest 147,000,000 results. Other sites like <a href="http://www.instructables.com/" target="_blank">Instructables</a>, <a href="http://snapguide.com/" target="_blank">Snapguide</a>, and <a href="http://pinterest.com/" target="_blank">Pinterest</a> will prove my point further regarding the plethora of user generated minecraft content out there. </div>
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I believe strongly in student voice, student choice, constructivist and constructionist learning. I am committed to providing opportunities for my students to contribute to this growing knowledge base around the game. It allows them to demonstrate their understanding while writing or producing for an authentic audience. It is safe to say that our students perform better when they know their work is out there and available to the public. They typically take more pride in their work when this is the case.</div>
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In this blog post, I will share my approach to showcasing student work and making the meaning relevant to them and the global minecraft community. </div>
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My game design and development course is choice / quest based. I use 3dgamelab and students choose the quest lines that appeal to them. Quests revolve around many learning pathways including coding, analyzing and reviewing games, writing step by step tutorials, learning skills related to game design, and of course creating their own games. Many of the quests are submitted in a public manner so they can be shared with the world,</div>
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We have a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEOSFf4mB_xm1N_n-g-GFrQ/feed" target="_blank">class YouTube channel</a>. Student projects are showcased throughout the channel. Currently, my 7th grader cycle class is working on a project where they are using Minecraft to <a href="https://education.minecraft.net/lessons/fairy-tale-reimagined/" target="_blank">Reimagine Timeless Fairy Tales</a> We have started to post walk through videos of the stories as well as 8th graders games in progress:</div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/videoseries?list=PL_Qs7sfiASRycz8BvmEdE6nnncAViEGYv" width="560"></iframe>
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A while back, we created a number of redstone tutorials to demonstrate the use of redstone when it was released in the Windows10 Version of Minecraft. Microsoft featured these videos on the Minecraft in Education Blog :) My students were super psyched to create these knowing they would be available on youtube. They came in for many lunch periods as well as before and after school to record and edit their videos.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dLLpA4Au5ck?list=PL_Qs7sfiASRyEdetyOTKI5JkFkT2KhVyu" width="560"></iframe><br />
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We have a number of other Minecraft related videos on our YouTube channel. One of my favorites (I apologize for the poor video quality) is a walk through of the student created mini game <a href="https://youtu.be/ZX91E-jZT0s" target="_blank">Cart Wreck</a>. It includes a conversation I had with the students about the development of the game. I'm blown away every time I watch this. The thought and planning that went into this is amazing and it is a great demonstration of student expertise.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZX91E-jZT0s?list=PL_Qs7sfiASRzkZmks0pJpBx2vArp9vcsV" width="560"></iframe><br />
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A few years ago I was introduced to <a href="http://snapguide.com/" target="_blank">Snapguide</a> and <a href="http://instructables.com/" target="_blank">Instructables</a>, two DIY sites designed for users to create step by step tutorials complete with images and text. I love this as a way for students to teach others while demonstrating their understanding. If they can write a guide that others can replicate from their directions, it is quite evident that they understand what they are explaining. This activity is a quest that repeats as I am happy to have students submit multiple tutorials and receive credit for them. When they are completed and worthy of sharing, I pin them on one of my <a href="http://pinterest.com/stevei2071" target="_blank">class showcase pinterest boards</a>. One board is dedicated to <a href="https://www.pinterest.com/stevei2071/student-created-minecraft-tutorials-and-videos/" target="_blank">Minecraft Tutorials and Videos</a> and is full of great snapguide tutorials.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This particular <a href="https://snapguide.com/guides/make-the-mario-theme-song-with-noteblocks/" target="_blank">snapguide</a> tutorial teaches you how to use noteblocks in Minecraft to play the Mario theme. I especially loved this one as I sat with the student for him to explain the process to me and was thrilled to learn how to do this. Hearing his explanation was great as it served as a terrific authentic assessment and opportunity to hear how enthusiastic he was to share his work :) </td></tr>
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I love the way the completed tutorials come out and really love sharing them with the world!<br />
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The process of sharing student work has become a natural part of my workflow. I use the pinterest chrome extension and while evaluating student work, if it is worthy of publishing to a wider audience, I simply click the extension and add it to the appropriate board. It's been fun to see the showcase evolve as I currently have close to 300 student projects shared.<br />
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I hope you will share my enthusiasm for student choice and student voice as we can really amplify the great work our students are doing.<br />
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Games and Learninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10525760825218991948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6499226437419643396.post-82764704969343617942016-11-20T06:48:00.000-08:002016-11-20T06:48:42.296-08:00The Evolution of a Game Dev Studio Inspired Learning Space<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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For years, my vision for the ultimate learning space was taking form. I teach Game Design and Development at William Annin Middle School in Basking Ridge, NJ. My dream was to create a studio feel for my learning space where students could pursue different avenues for learning and have a wide variety of resources available for them.<br />
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When I wrote the curriculum for the course I was able to build out the computer lab and include an Xbox 360 so students could create content for the Xbox using Visual C# and XNA Studio. This was a start, but I had bigger plans.<br />
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My vision included large LCD wall-mounted TVs, cozy sitting areas, multiple gaming consoles, Virtual Reality headsets, tabletop games, and other resources to provide students with a wide variety of opportunities to take learning into their own hands.<br />
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I was not sure how I would fund this venture, but that didn't stop me from dreaming BIG!<br />
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In March, 2014 I discovered <a href="http://donorschoose.org/" target="_blank">Donor's Choose</a>. I created a project called Empowering Learners in the Makers Age and asked for funds to purchase items including The XBOXOne, MakeyMakey, the OUYA Gaming Console, Raspberry Pi, Disney Infinity and several books to support students in learning to use these products. The project was fully funded and provided a great starting point in terms of moving toward the vision.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This TV is screaming for an upgrade... Stay tuned!</td></tr>
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For the next phase of my vision, I wanted to bring non-digital games into the classroom so students could analyze and deconstruct the game mechanics. While most of the games my students create are digital, I believe it is important for them to experience and consider creating non-digital games as well. With choice at the center of the class, students get to choose what type of game they create. From a pedagogical standpoint, my class is about the iterative design process so the type of game is left up to the students.<br />
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We submitted another donors choose project, <a href="https://www.donorschoose.org/project/game-designanalysis-and-deconstruction/1381968/?rf=page-siteshare-2016-11-project-teacher_1420407&challengeid=384761" target="_blank">Game Design, Analysis and Deconstruction of Non-Digital Games</a>. This project was submitted in October, 2014 and funded in 3 days!<br />
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Making progress! </div>
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We had acquired some great resources and the kids were embracing the passion driven / choice based learning environment. </div>
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Now it was time to start on the capital improvements to really reach my vision.<br />
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Our PTO has a call twice a year for 'wish list' grants to enhance the learning in our classrooms. In February, 2015 I put in a wish list for 3 large screen LCD TVs, a sound bar, and the hardware to connect the TVs throughout the room so that we could view content and present on all three TVs. This would make for a great space for learning as well as student content creation when it came to creating and testing games on the consoles. It would also provide a great training space for district wide Professional Development. I conduct a lot of PD for our staff and this would benefit our staff college program as well as classroom instruction. Above all, it would make for a super cool learning space that helped my vision to become a reality.</div>
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The PTO was gracious enough to fund the project and now we were REALLY moving forward!</div>
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We continued to move forward with two another Donors Choose projects, <a href="https://www.donorschoose.org/project/empowering-learners-in-the-maker-age-tak/1541540/?rf=page-siteshare-2016-11-project-teacher_1420407&challengeid=384761" target="_blank">Empowering Learners in the Maker Age: Take 2</a> and <a href="https://www.donorschoose.org/project/empowering-learners-in-the-maker-age-ta/1804714/?rf=page-siteshare-2016-11-project-teacher_1420407&challengeid=384761" target="_blank">Empowering Learners in the Maker Age: Take 3</a>. These projects brought additional resources to our class including The Playstation 4 with Little Big Planet 3 so students could create games for the PS4, the WiiU and Super Mario Maker so students could create their own Super Mario Brothers worlds, Little Bits so students could work with Minecraft and Littlebits to merge the physical and virutal worlds with the <a href="http://littlebits.cc/bitcraft" target="_blank">Bitcraft Mod</a> and much more.</div>
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You can read about how my students were using many of these tools through blog posts dedicated to our 20% time projects:</div>
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<li><a href="http://gamesandlearning1.blogspot.com/2015/10/20tuesday.html" target="_blank">20% Tuesday!</a></li>
<li><a href="http://gamesandlearning1.blogspot.com/2015/10/20percenttuesday-week-2-reflections.html" target="_blank">20% Tuesday: Week 2 Reflection</a></li>
<li><a href="http://gamesandlearning1.blogspot.com/2015/10/20percenttuesday-week-3-reflections.html" target="_blank">20% Tuesday: Week 3 Reflection</a></li>
<li><a href="http://gamesandlearning1.blogspot.com/2015/11/20percenttuesday-week-4-reflections.html" target="_blank">20% Tuesday: Week 4 Reflection</a></li>
<li><a href="http://gamesandlearning1.blogspot.com/2015/11/20percenttuesday-week-5-reflections.html" target="_blank">20% Tuesday: Week 5 Reflection</a></li>
<li><a href="http://gamesandlearning1.blogspot.com/2015/11/20percenttuesday-week-7-reflection.html" target="_blank">20% Tuesday: Week 7 Reflection</a></li>
<li><a href="http://gamesandlearning1.blogspot.com/2015/12/guest-blog-post-student-reflection-on.html" target="_blank">Guest Blog Post: Student Reflections on 20% Time</a> </li>
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The TVs have also provided us with great opportunities to <a href="http://gamesandlearning1.blogspot.com/2015/11/global-skype-thon-promoting-education.html" target="_blank">connect with other classrooms and Industry Professionals via Skype</a>. For the past two years we have participated actively in the <a href="http://gamesandlearning1.blogspot.com/2015/11/global-skype-thon-promoting-education.html" target="_blank">Global Skypeathon</a>. We are excited to meet with some amazing people this year!</div>
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<b>Next stop... Virtual Reality!</b></div>
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<a href="http://foundry10.org/" target="_blank">foundry10</a>, an educational foundation focusing on nontraditional approaches to learning began conducting research on the use of <a href="http://foundry10.org/areas-overview/virtual-reality/" target="_blank">Virtual Reality in the classroom</a> in Fall, 2015. My Game Design and Development program was selected as one of the pilot programs to participate. As such, we received the Oculus Rift SDK2 for students to use to explore VR content and create content to be experienced in Virtual Reality. During our first year, members from the foundry10 team visited us from Seattle to demo the HTC Vive. We were able to use the Vive for two weeks. To say the Vive was a hit would be a gross understatement. In addition to my students using the tech, they became the experts who could demo it with others. We maintained an open door policy in the classroom allowing others to come in and experience VR. It was an empowering experience for my students and certainly provided others with a sense of the potential of Virtual Reality in education.<br />
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Now we are participating in year 2 of the research and this year we were provided with an HTC Vive of our own. The students are exploring content, creating content within VR, and reviewing VR software to contribute to the greater community.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL4o_WUzuVur5Ciywy4qQq4gqgvgnn8eu1SDWfK-VVLRkYPSN2FNcc8nLyIQtOY8dYXt9fVa1AonEP1idmzjLQ30XOMsuAdwr6tT3xDs01ExCthS86vYLQQpLdDWH5Gw2dD71IlxtB2wo/s1600/IMG_5545.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhL4o_WUzuVur5Ciywy4qQq4gqgvgnn8eu1SDWfK-VVLRkYPSN2FNcc8nLyIQtOY8dYXt9fVa1AonEP1idmzjLQ30XOMsuAdwr6tT3xDs01ExCthS86vYLQQpLdDWH5Gw2dD71IlxtB2wo/s320/IMG_5545.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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The final piece to complete the vision for our learning space was comfortable seating around the TV areas. This would help to truly create an inviting and inspiring space for my students. Once again, I went to our school PTO with a wish list grant. I explored a number of options for seating with my students. Some were prohibitively expensive. Based on suggestions from other educators, Marianne Malmstrom (@knowclue) and Peggy Sheehy (@peggysheehy) who have created truly student centered learning spaces we looked at <a href="https://www.yogibo.com/" target="_blank">yogibo </a>bean bag furniture. The goal was to create two spaces, one for each side of the room in front of the TVs. Up to this point, kids were sitting on regular classroom chairs or standing to use the gaming consoles on the TVs. I couldn't wait to create a true living room inspired space for use with the TVs for building games, table top gaming, skyping with other classes and professionals, collaboration, and relaxing while reading or watching relevant videos. In addition, the space is often used by other classes and the after care program. This would create a space that the students could truly love being in. After all, school should be inviting and inspire learning. I believe that my learning space does just that. As Beth Houf would say, "We want to create a school where students, staff and parents are beating down the doors to get in...not out"<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSLtxvqvlITELo1jNrrdSOjLgm02ioihinStsdbh0jvSjuOLAPbJZeUEit6aXU43c_b1mmf7DMXK4lIZwjCB-DPOuPFY_EXRXJIPvKZcC1zv8x5I8JQ6aDLpn3oFsmvIRV7Wp05CUp4vw/s1600/break+down.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSLtxvqvlITELo1jNrrdSOjLgm02ioihinStsdbh0jvSjuOLAPbJZeUEit6aXU43c_b1mmf7DMXK4lIZwjCB-DPOuPFY_EXRXJIPvKZcC1zv8x5I8JQ6aDLpn3oFsmvIRV7Wp05CUp4vw/s320/break+down.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: white;">Here are some pics that show the final result and the learning space that my students and I absolutely LOVE!</span><br />
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<td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLYsuacNVduEJAez4cLuWm-lNJ60bX545cEoWyHoKULoaYhfnEYffCBp2RKLsA8QfpnSE63UzxedaEfTHelr1C32Csup7oTBG86Gc0gzKfgCLcpNMhhIW3TdcK_X0Dn5VgEoOn8dn0z8c/s1600/IMG_5542.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgLYsuacNVduEJAez4cLuWm-lNJ60bX545cEoWyHoKULoaYhfnEYffCBp2RKLsA8QfpnSE63UzxedaEfTHelr1C32Csup7oTBG86Gc0gzKfgCLcpNMhhIW3TdcK_X0Dn5VgEoOn8dn0z8c/s200/IMG_5542.JPG" width="200" /></a></td>
<td><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidkkjLy_8nrEwZredDUqRbUVwKtARZddY40ZYP4gLdochzEEE5DPtfTUjOfuENmjAo-QW9fnKCLF6dmIsoO3vD8o-gb5upSA_ALJ625PL62BuSirXxiWZbXErztgtUbAXi_easivPsOO8/s1600/IMG_5562.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidkkjLy_8nrEwZredDUqRbUVwKtARZddY40ZYP4gLdochzEEE5DPtfTUjOfuENmjAo-QW9fnKCLF6dmIsoO3vD8o-gb5upSA_ALJ625PL62BuSirXxiWZbXErztgtUbAXi_easivPsOO8/s200/IMG_5562.JPG" width="200" /></a></td>
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Games and Learninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10525760825218991948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6499226437419643396.post-5105614631336234972016-10-23T10:08:00.002-07:002016-10-23T10:12:34.482-07:00Playstation VR: Why bring Tech into the Classroom? Ask your students!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH6XgU-9_lScPvkRNBQrhHVmX4u9JJm1EXiV4CgAslv8JkOdIWbxu76u9fLe4QcEIGaTFj9bQeVWgMf3gL1RGYRFce7OTXQayBysapOYF56o01EU1O1ZJRPNXx6PeB9GLlOlk-jAOeQiU/s1600/student-led.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="128" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgH6XgU-9_lScPvkRNBQrhHVmX4u9JJm1EXiV4CgAslv8JkOdIWbxu76u9fLe4QcEIGaTFj9bQeVWgMf3gL1RGYRFce7OTXQayBysapOYF56o01EU1O1ZJRPNXx6PeB9GLlOlk-jAOeQiU/s320/student-led.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
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<a href="https://www.donorschoose.org/project/virtual-reality-in-the-classroom-take-2/2287135/?rf=link-siteshare-2016-10-teacher-teacher_1420407&challengeid=384761" target="_blank"><br /></a></div>
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<a href="https://www.donorschoose.org/project/virtual-reality-in-the-classroom-take-2/2287135/?rf=link-siteshare-2016-10-teacher-teacher_1420407&challengeid=384761" target="_blank">Student led donors' choose project: Sony PlaystationVR</a> </div>
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I believe strongly in student voice in the learning process. Currently, my students are part of a large scale research project looking at the implementation of Virtual Reality in schools. The research is being funded and conducted by <a href="http://foundry10.org/" target="_blank">foundry10</a>, an educational foundation in Seattle looking at non-traditional approaches to learning. This is our second year in the study. Last year, foundry10 provided us with an Oculus Rift and a high end computer to run it. Members of the foundry10 team came to visit and provide a demo of the HTC Vive for my students (as well as staff and administrators). They left the Vive with us for 2 weeks. To say it was a huge hit would be an understatement. My students loved it, as did everyone we pulled in to try it. This year, foundry10 provided us with an HTC Vive of our own! We raised money through donors choose for a computer to power it.</div>
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Now, we are looking to add the Sony Playstation VR to our VR collection. The Playstation VR is unique in that it might very well be the most reasonable point of entry in terms of high end VR technology as it is priced at $400 (providing you already have the PS4). For our class, having the three current forerunners, we can truly become the authority on Virtual Reality. My students are doing research, comparing the devices, creating their own content, supporting others, and ultimately helping to contribute to how VR can be best integrated in schools.</div>
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Donors Choose provides a wonderful opportunity to put your ideas out there and use community support to crowd fund projects for the classroom. To leverage student voice, they have added the option for student led projects where students share how funding the project will help them to learn and how they plan to use the purchased items. Student led projects ask students to respond to 3 questions:</div>
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<li>What is Your Project Idea? How would you use the items in your classroom?</li>
<li>How will you be a leader in bringing this project to life? How will it help you demonstrate leadership skills?</li>
<li>Why is this project important to you and your school community?</li>
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<a href="https://www.donorschoose.org/project/virtual-reality-in-the-classroom-take-2/2287135/?rf=link-siteshare-2016-10-teacher-teacher_1420407&challengeid=384761" target="_blank">Our project, Virtual Reality in the Classroom: Take 2</a> is a student led project. The link will provide the project overview and some of the student responses. I tossed the idea out to my students to provide their response to the three questions, and I received far more student feedback then could be fit in the project writeup. So, I wanted to share the remaining student responses here so everyone can see why my students want to get the Sony Playstation VR in our classroom and how it will contribute to our learning as well as the greater research community.</div>
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<b>Student responses:</b></div>
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"I believe it would be a very good idea to add VR to our classroom. First, we are researching VR to discover what it's like and what we would like added to it. Having more than one system of VR could help because experiencing different types of it will further our understanding of it. We will be able to play a bigger variety of games which would really help."</div>
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It would help our leadership skills because it would let us work in VR to discover characteristics of it ourselves and be able to show leardershib by explaining these characteristics to others. </div>
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If the project is funded, I would like to complete some quests to do blog reviews on different VR games. Also, I would learn about VR to be able to explain it to others as well as right blog posts about VR in general so others can learn about it. Overall, adding the Playstation VR to our classroom would be really great for our class."</div>
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"I think it would bea great idea to add Playstation VR to our classroom because I think it will really help us understand how our games are supposed to make the player feel. For example, if we have created a jungle themed game, we could use VR to test out our game and see if it actually takes that player to the atmosphere we want them to be in. It would support VR research because it would get young teens to experience new things which would show a number of people supporting it ideas on improving VR and much more. </div>
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This project will help us develop leadership skills by allowing us to virtually lead someone or something in a game, such as a pack of wolves or a tribe. Though this is just one example, there are many ways that VR will effect us in a good way. </div>
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If this project is funded, in Game Design class, I would like to create some of my own VR games because I think it would be extremely interesting that you could create your idea. Not just on a computer screen, but for the time being your idea could be in virtual reality. Therefore, I think using VR in Game Design class as well as other classes would be an amazing experience for everyone!</div>
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"I think it will be a good idea to add the Playstation VR to our class because it gives students new and/or different experiences they might not otherwise be able to experience. It would support our research in VR because the Playstation VR gives a wide variety of different games / genres for us to experience and by adding controllers, it makes the games feel more real.</div>
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This project will help us develop leadership skills because you get to experience certain events that may happen to you in a later date. This can serve well for simulations so when you experience these events you will know what to do and how to do it. It can help us learn how to perform important tasks.</div>
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If this project is funded, I would simulate events I wouldn't be able to experience, such as old time events or science fiction."</div>
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There were many other student contributions, but this gives a good sense of the enthusiasm my students have for this opportunity to put learning in their hands with such cutting edge technology.</div>
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We would love your <a href="https://www.donorschoose.org/project/virtual-reality-in-the-classroom-take-2/2287135/?rf=link-siteshare-2016-10-teacher-teacher_1420407&challengeid=384761" target="_blank">support </a>if you could help out. Donations of any size will help us reach our goal.. </div>
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Games and Learninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10525760825218991948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6499226437419643396.post-66056896941871906052016-10-03T12:47:00.001-07:002016-10-03T12:47:23.616-07:00Minecon 2016: Can't wait for Minecon 2017 :)<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjULWlwrBSVyIrL6A3wu_Ou7MRx-JsaNhzcp0D0-NMrsYbL8NrGk_GElrz78DPF4_EVJ3HNn4kmzE-X78PtZj0sLtZOZog3gCRV5GVNJ6n1vVNV1a2ZVCsYviCO5dvyAJwJy8S4LJAldkw/s1600/enderman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjULWlwrBSVyIrL6A3wu_Ou7MRx-JsaNhzcp0D0-NMrsYbL8NrGk_GElrz78DPF4_EVJ3HNn4kmzE-X78PtZj0sLtZOZog3gCRV5GVNJ6n1vVNV1a2ZVCsYviCO5dvyAJwJy8S4LJAldkw/s400/enderman.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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Last week I attended Minecon with 12,000 of my closest friends :) It was an amazing experience and my hat is off to the Mojang and Microsoft Teams that put the event together. It was truly a celebration of this game that everyone in attendance adores. The schedule was packed from the Opening Ceremonies, which brought ALL attendees together to kick off the event to the Closing Ceremonies, which brought us all back together to shed a tear and celebrate the shared experience.<br />
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I was excited to participate in two panels, one on eSports in Schools and the other on Resources for Education featuring a group of <a href="http://education.microsoft.com/minecraftmentors" target="_blank">Minecraft Mentors</a>. It was great to collaborate with an all star lineup on both panels. I will be posting the video recording of each panel when they become available. I only wish I was able to attend the many incredible panels through the weekend.<br />
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The exhibit floor was awesome including a variety of areas designated by minecraft themed biomes, numerous vendors, a Minecraft: Education classroom with sessions by Jim Pike (@joakleyiii), John Miller (@johnmilleredu), Shane Asselstine (@hikarikishi), and Adam Bellow (@adambellow) presenting the new partnership between Minecraft: Education Edition and BreakoutEDU (@breakoutedu). <br />
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Without a doubt, one of the best parts of Minecon for me this year was the fact that I was able to share the experience with my daughter, Leila.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfkLK_V3TH-6np9FWD28P5YHPh908TnpyzQO9tKSOhKEMIJO5b8DzgFpo7nI-eWnhiUDuGUzpyfM10Pvjlq0ttMS2afxn84NirvAgRo94hmAAQjTn3ElxX_oOFHZrRT1VOl-aiXPxeqcg/s1600/leila.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfkLK_V3TH-6np9FWD28P5YHPh908TnpyzQO9tKSOhKEMIJO5b8DzgFpo7nI-eWnhiUDuGUzpyfM10Pvjlq0ttMS2afxn84NirvAgRo94hmAAQjTn3ElxX_oOFHZrRT1VOl-aiXPxeqcg/s320/leila.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Leila and I celebrating Minecraft at Minecon!</td></tr>
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<br /> Leila moderated the Student Voice pane which featured some amazing kids. Generally, the kids presented with their teacher, but Braeden (@braedenart) presented with Rafranz Davis (@rafranzdavis), his aunt. Braeden shared his story of how Minecraft was a great unifier for him. The story starts with he and his classmates being given a rather interesting homework assignment. The assignment was to "NOT play minecraft." REALLY??? Anyway, don't get me started on that one. Later at school there was a tech day where a number of kids were playing minecraft and started to play together. They took their interest outside of school and a number of friendships were formed.<br /><br />
I can't talk about Braeden without sharing an amazing Minecon moment. Braeden poured his heart into creating a puppet in the likeness of Stampy Longnose. We spent a good deal of time with Braeden and the puppet. Braeden was on a mission to give the puppet to Stampy. Well, a few hours before Braeden and his aunt had to leave to catch their plane, a meetup was arranged.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVN9XDSWhfCvMtacyUx-hAbRJWfiFVSxnZQh7ItUck5EZyYmrl9KQi8A21tomzYOe1DINDCoD0On0uEcjFoq7ZkGPBP7UmyATm2kCFrBysK4To3-aB9Vv0jbRixqOlRasxGzb6J5ii07U/s1600/braeden.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVN9XDSWhfCvMtacyUx-hAbRJWfiFVSxnZQh7ItUck5EZyYmrl9KQi8A21tomzYOe1DINDCoD0On0uEcjFoq7ZkGPBP7UmyATm2kCFrBysK4To3-aB9Vv0jbRixqOlRasxGzb6J5ii07U/s320/braeden.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Braeden meets Stampy! Mission Accomplished!<br /><div style="text-align: left;">
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There is so much more to share and I will likely write a few more posts, but wanted to get something out there before I kept putting it off. You know, the plight of the blogger...<br />
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Games and Learninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10525760825218991948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6499226437419643396.post-84239346217221857042016-07-22T10:03:00.003-07:002016-07-22T10:03:48.386-07:00Breaking News: First non-Pokemon related accident reported since the game's release!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
This just in! There has been an accident reported that is NOT related to PokemonGo. I know it is hard to believe, but it's true. When asked about the incident, Isaacs reported, "I figured that as long as I wasn't playing PokemonGo while I was riding my bike I didn't really have to pay attention. All I hear these days is about people getting hurt, mugged, etc. while playing." Isaacs continued, "I am an avid player of the game, but at this time I had my phone safely tucked away in my backpack as I was riding my bike.".<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKzuiSCCDHYLmixHNaml3yUS1b82AKllW0qLEo6H6UHk8v1_OTRnpI6AMxEH1QnRN30Gs2RXQUjvayfkOddxd2s5ylKf2zbQG1O0znna2qtJZQE2SfeWzXFtwlfVkYQJvCMLZs5EfkSJk/s1600/bike+accident.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKzuiSCCDHYLmixHNaml3yUS1b82AKllW0qLEo6H6UHk8v1_OTRnpI6AMxEH1QnRN30Gs2RXQUjvayfkOddxd2s5ylKf2zbQG1O0znna2qtJZQE2SfeWzXFtwlfVkYQJvCMLZs5EfkSJk/s320/bike+accident.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The blood is real. Surprisingly, there were <br />no Pokemon involved in this accident. </td></tr>
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This story is leading many to believe that we still need to follow standard safety protocol even when we are NOT playing the game. When asked how this could be avoided in the future, Isaacs proclaimed, "I think it is still important to watch where you are going. I would still suggest not taking candy from a stranger, even if they are not offering you a rare Pokemon.". He further concluded, "I beg all of the people out there, still look both ways before you cross the street. Even if you are NOT trying to catch a Pokemon."<br />
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All we can conclude from this story is that it seems as though the same rules that we used to apply to safe living still apply, Pokemon or no Pokemon.<br />
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Games and Learninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10525760825218991948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6499226437419643396.post-9190727595288990942016-01-13T05:06:00.000-08:002016-01-13T05:06:08.916-08:00Student Voice: A Published Author!<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">GameMaker Programming by Example available<br />
on <a href="http://www.amazon.com/GameMaker-Programming-Example-Brian-Christian/dp/1785887963/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452607759&sr=8-1&keywords=gamemaker+programming+by+example" target="_blank">Amazon </a>and through <a href="https://www.packtpub.com/game-development/gamemaker-programming-example" target="_blank">PACKT Publishing</a></td></tr>
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Last year I was approached by Packt Publishing, a publisher of technology books to author a step by step guide to learning the GameMaker Language (GML). GML is a programming language that is used to program games using the GameMaker development environment. GameMaker has a drag n' drop approach to creating games as well as a robust language that can be used to program. Programming with GML provides incredible flexibility over the drag n' drop approach. I teach video game design and development to 8th graders. Generally speaking, instruction focuses on the drag n' drop approach as it is a great way to introduce computational thinking and GameMaker is great for learning syntax through the visual approach which translates well to learning coding.<br />
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I always encourage students to learn GML on their own and support them the best I can. I am not an expert and definitely do not claim to be. As a result, I was inclined to turn down the offer to write the book. Fortunately, it occurred to me that one of my students took immediately to the language and essentially taught himself as part of our 20% time project. I approached the publisher and asked if they would be open to me co-authoring the book with my 8th grade student. I was clear that he was the expert and I would support him in the process. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Brian - published author at age 15</td></tr>
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The writing process began while Brian was in 8th grade and he wrote through the summer and into the Fall to complete the book. I assumed the role of editor as Brian truly was the brains behind the project. I am so proud of his accomplishment. He was extremely organized through the process and demonstrated great responsibility in terms of ensuring the content was accurate and the directions to the reader were clear. I am proud of the final product which is now available from <a href="http://www.amazon.com/GameMaker-Programming-Example-Brian-Christian/dp/1785887963/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452607759&sr=8-1&keywords=gamemaker+programming+by+example" target="_blank">Amazon </a>and <a href="https://www.packtpub.com/game-development/gamemaker-programming-example" target="_blank">Packt Publishing</a> in paperback and kindle. I'm 47 and this is my first published book. I can only imagine what Brian's future has in store!<br />
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I am a firm believer that students need to create content and publish to an authentic audience. In my class, students are active bloggers, write step by step tutorials, and publish videos to youtube. I was very pleased to see that there is a strong emphasis on student voice in the new <a href="http://www.iste.org/standards/ISTE-standards/standards-for-students" target="_blank">ISTE student standards</a>. It is so important to empower our students to contribute to a global audience and be active members of the educational community.<br />
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Games and Learninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10525760825218991948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6499226437419643396.post-15265566378593595002015-12-14T09:31:00.001-08:002015-12-14T09:31:04.638-08:00Student Guest Blog Post: #20PercentTuesday reflection - Oculus Rift and Sketchup<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Hi there! My name is Sophie and today I am sharing my #20PercentTuesday experience so far. Before I decided to pick my option in this Mr Isaacs asked the class if any one wanted to play the Oculus Rift. As soon as he said that my hand went straight up! I always see famous youtubers use it and it looked so cool and awesome! After I played a game in it, the game was that you could go around a detailed house in virtual reality! After I tried that game, I knew my choice and was definitely to work with the Oculus Rift, it was so cool that I could see my potential with virtual reality.<br />
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My friend and I were thinking what we would make to play in the virtual reality object. We decided to make an idea off the first game I played on the Oculus Rift, we want to make a house with objects inside that you have to find. We looked up some youtube videos that went through the process of making the house and saw that we have to go to the system called SketchUp. In SketchUp we would make our house with a bunch of specific tools.<br />
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After we make our house we will put it into Unity. Unity is the program where the Oculus Rift plays its games. So far through my experience I have really learned the basics in making my game in SketchUp. I have gone through all of the tools in order to make all the specific measures and basics of the house. The progress we have been making is very good so far, we have made a mini version of the house to see what we know so far in SketchUp. Since we know a lot now about it, we plan to move forward in making the base of the real house. In this whole experience it's just crazy and amazing to imagine me walking through my own game and creation using the Oculus Rift.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Here is another game called MushroomVR Ball that I played where you have to collect coins without falling out of the world.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbd_C_UWjuW06olWzMWq54-yThINcNiNZjk-OdMMOrNYT69-tee7F2mdmPqcwL5JpolvfWG5aUecrgHqzt6toF0-4v3C3wfAwztW8lfodi1_lcNDFXc3Kn3IbUsTQH6-JsN0rZo0ITq_U/s1600/ahhh.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbd_C_UWjuW06olWzMWq54-yThINcNiNZjk-OdMMOrNYT69-tee7F2mdmPqcwL5JpolvfWG5aUecrgHqzt6toF0-4v3C3wfAwztW8lfodi1_lcNDFXc3Kn3IbUsTQH6-JsN0rZo0ITq_U/s400/ahhh.png" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Here is a game on the Oculus Rift called Don't Let Go that you can play virtually. In this game you cannot let go of the computer while scary things challenge you. I played this too and it was great.</td></tr>
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Games and Learninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10525760825218991948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6499226437419643396.post-55645751613419121022015-12-11T09:06:00.000-08:002015-12-11T09:06:42.319-08:00Student Guest Blog Post: #20PercentTuesday: Getting Started with Unreal Engine <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
In Game design and development we are allowed to do 20% time , and for that i am using Oculus rift and recreate a house in Colonial Williamsburg that people could explore in Virtual Reality with Oculus rift.<br />
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So far i have done some tutorials while i am working with Unreal engine 4. I got inspired to do this by visiting Colonial Williamsburg, and this is a town that shows you how it was lived during the Civil War. I think it is important to know how people lived back then so we appreciate how we live better. I have learned to create a project and create a blank<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYxbqdaWZGFNImwufN4_eDfzoQzwXPdjcp0ChuDJpyHkmdsUwjgV5LvJ7B5YcGUFAYb7P79SsrmQJCVN7WSdKA-bw6Mggj-7YrNVoCum6gCERtxZGZ8OVk1x9Ido_gzCzeX_EqMQ8ozy8/s1600/Capture.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="230" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYxbqdaWZGFNImwufN4_eDfzoQzwXPdjcp0ChuDJpyHkmdsUwjgV5LvJ7B5YcGUFAYb7P79SsrmQJCVN7WSdKA-bw6Mggj-7YrNVoCum6gCERtxZGZ8OVk1x9Ido_gzCzeX_EqMQ8ozy8/s320/Capture.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
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My next steps are to create a room like this one and sort of create a game out of it.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWy7nnoLLbUhINiHlYUkkEHVrsJVhFocW6_U2byqn-geKIEV4nyn7QVZhumL8ippwUySNG7be8OziXtBBxrho3pwiywsZbn5ogUoHzW_A4TDZe6-myoZUyyuLfZcmjSjHXgMmX_KQxSps/s1600/Capture1.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWy7nnoLLbUhINiHlYUkkEHVrsJVhFocW6_U2byqn-geKIEV4nyn7QVZhumL8ippwUySNG7be8OziXtBBxrho3pwiywsZbn5ogUoHzW_A4TDZe6-myoZUyyuLfZcmjSjHXgMmX_KQxSps/s320/Capture1.PNG" width="320" /></a></div>
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I wanted to use the oculus rift rather than Virtual Reality because i like how you can physically pretend that you are actually experiencing the home. I am going to recreate a Colonial style mini town and the main focus are in a couple of forms. I like that the room i am going to create is going to allow you to interact with the technology and people and hoe the daily life was back then</div>
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Games and Learninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10525760825218991948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6499226437419643396.post-63157940886360464742015-12-09T08:32:00.002-08:002015-12-09T10:00:16.938-08:00The Whitehouse #CSEdWeek Computer Science Tech Jam Recap<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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A little over a week ago I was doing homework with my kids with my phone close at hand as usual. I tend to obsessively check email and often think to myself, Why am I doing this? Do I think I'm going to get that email that says I won the lottery or was being invited to an event at the Whitehouse or something? Well, low and behold, I glance down and see an email with the subject line: </div>
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<i>Invitation: Whitehouse CS Tech Jam - December 7, 2015</i></blockquote>
You could say that it caught my eye. I opened the email and was presented with the following:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxTPOJHtvivHc30kHvtbjUSqunnSXEK8ML_ii-kN3p-c8Z3MFwOvJM-yCKNd1hV1S95ChOutUWhHmYQwPVNR5JDqiuHGo_eKwKpbpJrFnRiFRVebWLHt9Ju02SRpLcUMOGC0fw34iJ_ck/s1600/whitehouse+invite.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="291" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxTPOJHtvivHc30kHvtbjUSqunnSXEK8ML_ii-kN3p-c8Z3MFwOvJM-yCKNd1hV1S95ChOutUWhHmYQwPVNR5JDqiuHGo_eKwKpbpJrFnRiFRVebWLHt9Ju02SRpLcUMOGC0fw34iJ_ck/s640/whitehouse+invite.PNG" width="640" /></a></div>
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I was a bit excited, in a little bit of disbelief, and certainly honored. <br />
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As the day approached, I became aware of some of the other dyamic people that would be there and was excited to find out that a number of friends that I have a great deal of respect and admiration for would be there. This list included Lucas Gillispie (@lucasgillispie) was also attending. In addition, friends including Rafranz Davis (@rafranzdavis), Mark Deloura (@markdeloura), Deidre Quarnstrom (@Deidre206) along with Robin, Jason, and Michelle from the #Minecraft team, Erik Martin (@Eriklaes), Jed Dearbury (@mrdearbury1), Tammi Schrader (@TammiSchrader), Kara Chesal (@KCintheNYC), Katrina Stevens (@KatrinaStevens1) and others. In addition, members of the google classroom team, Magic Leap, Sphero, and Raspberry Pi, Glass Lab, and a number of amazing educators from around the country would be in attendance. I was very excited to collaborate with such an amazing and resourceful group.<br />
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Sunday was a great day in the city as Lucas and I spent a beautiful day strolling around the Capital hacking portals and making the city a safer place for the Resistence team in Ingress. Sorry, that's a lot of geek talk for we walked around and played the location based game, Ingress in the area around the Whitehouse.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The before picture - when the 'enlightened' <br />
still controlled the White House</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The after picture - Peace of mind is restored as <br />
the Resistence has regained control of the Whitehouse</td></tr>
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We awoke early on Monday as we needed to arrive at the Whitehouse by 7:15 am to ensure there were no hold ups with our security clearance. We were quite early and it was beautiful to see the Whitehouse and the surrounding area as the sun was rising and the moon was still in plain view.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Early morning view of the WhiteH</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Eisenhower Executive Office Building at the Whitehouse - our office for the day.</td></tr>
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We made it through security and then Lucas and I found ourselves alone and a bit lost in the Eisenhower building. There was a sign that indicated that the Truman Bowling Alley was located in the basement. Very tempting... We wandered around the entire first floor before running into some other participants and realizing that we needed to make it to the 4th floor :) </div>
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We entered and were greeted with breakfast and the opportunity to spend some time interacting with the other invited guests. It was great to reconnect with Jed Dearbury who I had met in Seattle a few weeks prior. He's a rock star in terms of Skype in the Classroom. His presentation at the #redefinelearn event was one of the highlights. I realized Tammi Schrader, who I have been friends with online for some time and have been waiting to meet was also at our table. It was great to meet her in person (finally!). Then, as the talking continued, I realized that next to me was Greg Zecchini from the Google Classroom team. I was on the lookout for him and others from the team based on Jonathon Rochelle's alert that they would be there. </div>
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The Welcoming remarks were kicked off by Danielle Carnival, Assistant Director, Education and Learning Science, from the Whitehouse Office of Science and Technology Policy (@whitehouseOSTP). Danielle had been the one communicating with us prior to the event. She was followed by Megan Smith, CTO from the OSTP. Megan brought a great energy and passion to the discussion as she framed the day of a day for us to be inspired and create projects that will inspire others. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Megan Smith brought Pikachu and other toys along to help inspire creativity for the day</td></tr>
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Next up was Richard Culatta (@rec54). I have always been a fan of Richard and his leadership as the Director at the Office of EdTech. Richard has a game design background and totally believes in and supports the value of games in learning. He is helping to push the needle and move the discussion forward in a significant way. My favorite Richard Culatta quote remains, "Learning is Fun. We need to stop making it boring." Yep, that about sums it up!<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"Learning is Fun. We have to stop making it boring." ~@rec54</td></tr>
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Other speakers included Janice Cuny, the Program Director for Computing Education at NSF, Gretchen Achenback, Research Scientist from NCWIT (National Center for Women and Information Technology. Rafranz Davis closed out the house in her typical awesome fashion. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rafranz Davis, amazing educator and advocate for equity in education</td></tr>
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Now it was time to get to work. The day was structured as a hack-a-thon, termed a Tech Jam with the goal of solving problems and generating opportunities around bringing computer science to elementary school. Mark DeLoura kicked off the working session by setting the stage for our teams to solve problems and CREATE. </div>
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We had six hours to develop something as a team of 5 to 6 people to showcase during the Expo at the end of the day. Groups were made up of educators, developers, and other industry professionals.</div>
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Ideas included:</div>
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<b>CodeQuest</b>, monthly coding challenge in a box, created by my group. Our idea was modeled after the Loot Crate idea and would be a subscription based service where each month the teacher / facilitator would receive a box with a new tool (i.e. MakeMakey, Sphero, Little Bits kit, Arduino board, Raspberry Pi, etc.). The module would include a series of one sheet cards to explain the technology, teach a coding concept, share a 'watch it - code it' activity where students would follow a step by step tutorial to create something based on the tool and the coding activity. The next step would be a 'Mod it' step where a series of design challenges would be provided to allow the student to modify the project and thus extend their learning. Finally, they would be presented with choice of Quest Cards that provide a real world problem to solve using the contents of the monthly kit and the coding knowledge the students have to date. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lucas 'pitching' CodeQuest during the Tech Jam Expo</td></tr>
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<b>CodeaGram </b>might have been my favorite product as it was modeled after Instagram (talk about meeting the kids where they are!) and users could code something (a small app or program) and upload the program to the service. The code would be available by clicking a button on the app and the user could download the code right from the app. What a great way to have coders showcase their work and be part of a larger coding community. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wowwing me with the prototype (pretty close to being ready to launch!) of CodeaGram</td></tr>
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There were many other great ideas for sure. I would need to write a series of posts to cover all of them!<br />
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Closing remarks were provided by John King, Delegated Deputy Secretary, Department of Education. He spoke of the importance of making opportunities accessible to everyone and shared stories of him being the person to represent any form of diversity on occasion. We need to create products and opportunities that meet the diverse needs of all learners. </div>
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The day was amazing in so many ways and as is the case often, the people really made it the tremendous experience it was. Thanks to Erik Martin for thinking of me when it came to invitations and the OSTP staff, the awesome interns who organized the day's events, and everyone who participated and made it possible. What a day!</div>
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Games and Learninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10525760825218991948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6499226437419643396.post-37119146873892223542015-12-08T07:43:00.002-08:002015-12-08T07:43:45.124-08:00Guest Blog Post: Student Reflection on 20%Time with Disney Infinity<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<a href="http://www.iheartinfinity.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Disney-Infinity-2.0-Characters.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="223" src="http://www.iheartinfinity.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Disney-Infinity-2.0-Characters.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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For my 20% time, I am working on the Disney Infinity on the PS4. So far, my partner and I have been working on a battle arena to fight monsters, as well as a parkour map. Through this experience, I have learned how to use a PS4 controller (being a PC gamer), and how to design cool things in Disney Infinity. I think the next step would be to continue working on the parkour, and create cool jumps and obstacles. But overall, I am excited about playing Disney infinity :D<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In this image, you can see the parkour that my partner and I have made. One of us built the parkour map, and the other tested to make sure it was possible to complete all the jumps and rolls. The farther you go down the parkour, the harder it will be. As we developed the map, some slight changes were made in order to make the parkour possible.</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In this image, you see the battle arena (w/o the enemies). Normally, this big structure would be packed with monsters. But in order to take the picture, we made sure there was no monsters to mess up the shot. Over to the left you can see the ramp which leads to the exit of the arena, once you fight you way through all the monsters, In order to work in the game, the arena usually has about 50ish monsters, Once all the monsters are defeated you could even fight against your ally! Our next steps might be to make a scoring mechanism, and to make a monster spawner.</td></tr>
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Games and Learninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10525760825218991948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6499226437419643396.post-81881775745187237352015-12-02T15:54:00.001-08:002015-12-03T05:42:37.960-08:0020PercentTime for Teachers<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I have come to believe that it is important to surround yourself with the people you want to be around. For me, those people are others passionate about playing, tinkering, and continually learning based on their interests. Might sound a lot like my approach to teaching, but I suppose that makes good sense.<br />
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As you may know, my students have been involved in a project called #20PercentTuesday where they pursue passion based projects. Well, us teachers need some of that time to dedicate to learning about what excites us as well. This past weekend we did just that, in fact on two occasions. On Friday, Kevin Jarrett (@kjarrett) hosted a group of us in his awesome learning space at the Northfield Community School (@ncsnj). We had a blast working on our own projects and sharing what we were doing. Here are some highlights:</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sarah receiving some help to use the Oculus Rift</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rurik (<span style="font-size: 12.8px;">@ruriknackeraud ) </span><span style="font-size: 12.8px;">flying a plane (a little better than Sarah aka #croptopknitter @artdabbler13)</span></td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjax3KALs3wtSQ530nfUmSfxocwcO-gVC94Snlg_tpcj2g_RRqYlMakX71z_axq1hq-9MTJx8HccbckZtX25QztRYSGChXpThmhJIaeDgoemDRJT0I5dm6SIDHs2cc-NDDsxkJau0QQOW8/s640/blogger-image--1699364755.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjax3KALs3wtSQ530nfUmSfxocwcO-gVC94Snlg_tpcj2g_RRqYlMakX71z_axq1hq-9MTJx8HccbckZtX25QztRYSGChXpThmhJIaeDgoemDRJT0I5dm6SIDHs2cc-NDDsxkJau0QQOW8/s640/blogger-image--1699364755.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Leila (@leilaboo215) editing her vlog alongside an oculus rifter</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">My lovely wife, Cathy (@iwearthecrowns) trying to configure the @littlebits cloudbit to work with #minecraft BitCraft mod</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Every school needs an awesome studio for their daily news show!</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kevin Jarrett (@kjarrett) trying his hand at the Oculus. The play by play provided was priceless.</td></tr>
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Please check out Meredith Martin's (@geekyteach) <a href="http://techforteachers.com/2015/11/black-friday-maker-day/" target="_blank">Black Friday maker Day post</a> for a great run down of the day's festivities!<br />
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So that was Friday. Fast forward to Sundat, quite possible our most fun #coffeeEduNJ to date. More playing and exploring cool stuff. Jonathan Rochelle (@jrochelle) brought the google expedition kit and took our caffeinated group on a few great journeys including the great barrier reef and some amazing waterfalls.</div>
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To stay with the virtual reality theme I brought the oculus rift out for a spin. People played mushroom ball VR, a fun VR 3D platformer and our goto horror experience "don't let go". One great quote of the day came from the son of Chris Harris (@principal_H) who stated emphatically, "this is the most fun I've ever had at a coffee shop". </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jonathan Rochelle (@jrochelle) guiding an excited group through #googleexpeditions. I spy @mzgrz and @keith_guarino)</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Wait... Is that Barry Saide (@barrykid1) and his lovely wife jessica (@jazica30) at a #coffeeEduNJ?</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Principal Harris (@Principal_H) watching as his son explores virtual reality with the oculus rift.</td></tr>
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Our coffeeEdu group has become a family affair and adults and kids in attendance were wowed by the virtual reality experiences. Definitely made for rich discussion and excitement about what's possible. </div>
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Games and Learninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10525760825218991948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6499226437419643396.post-38545132821842669432015-11-29T12:28:00.002-08:002015-11-29T12:28:53.160-08:00Global Skype-a-Thon: Promoting Education without Borders<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b>Join the Global <a href="https://education.microsoft.com/skypeathon" target="_blank">Skype-a-Thon</a> on December 3 and 4, 2015. </b></h2>
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Have you used Skype in the Classroom? There are so many wonderful opportunities to get involved and bring amazing learning opportunities to your students. A few weeks ago I participated in the #RedefineLearn event at the Microsoft campus in Redmond. One of my key takeaways was how amazing the <a href="https://education.microsoft.com/skypeintheclassroom" target="_blank">Skype in the Classroom</a> program is. The Skype-a-thon is a great way to get you started with using Skype with your students. Getting started is easy and the resources available through Microsoft make it easy to get involved.<br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="500px" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" mozallowfullscreen="" msallowfullscreen="" scrolling="no" src="https://sway.com/s/AhjovOd7fjMgvg1y/embed" style="border: none; max-height: 100vh; max-width: 100%;" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="760px"></iframe>
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I encourage you to <a href="https://education.microsoft.com/skypeathon" target="_blank">sign up now</a>. The easiest ways to get involved:<br />
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<b><a href="https://education.microsoft.com/connectwithothers/playmysteryskype" target="_blank">Mystery Skype</a> </b>connects you with another class somewhere in the world. Both teams ask yes/no questions in an attempt to figure out where the other class is from. <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIyv-3UIAvx7LBYowLEEQ2IQ3LxMfH9VqRfqwC8EjfE82JV3ngyuKKYGABYxrEjPK9G32_MVu2RDbRhfF0QjmgLwindW2mM8saJZZLmiyHj_MGA7sbM1d_CJAQU3TiEpcnRtX3IBAm81o/s1600/guestspeakre.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="136" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIyv-3UIAvx7LBYowLEEQ2IQ3LxMfH9VqRfqwC8EjfE82JV3ngyuKKYGABYxrEjPK9G32_MVu2RDbRhfF0QjmgLwindW2mM8saJZZLmiyHj_MGA7sbM1d_CJAQU3TiEpcnRtX3IBAm81o/s640/guestspeakre.PNG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<b><a href="https://education.microsoft.com/connectwithothers/guestspeakers" target="_blank">Guest Speakers</a> </b>are available and willing to meet with your class. You can also sign up <a href="https://education.microsoft.com/howtobecomeaguestspeaker" target="_blank">to be a guest speaker</a>. The Skype in the Classroom program has a wide array of speakers on many different topics. From my experience, experts are very willing to take some time to visit your class, so if there is someone specific you would like as a visitor, I strongly encourage you to reach out directly. Twitter is a great starting point to make the connection.<br />
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<b><a href="https://education.microsoft.com/findalesson/virtualfieldtrip" target="_blank">Virtual Field Trips</a> </b>are a way to bring your students anywhere in the world from the comfort of your classroom. At the #redefinelearn event we met with someone from the Museum of Science in Raleigh who shared 'the unhuggables' with us. <br />
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<b>How I've been connecting globally:</b><br />
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I have been using Skype and Google Hangout to connect my students with game developers. I find it incredibly valuable to provide students with access to industry professionals who can share ideas, tips, and even guide my students to follow their passion through our interactions. Some of the experts we met with so far include:<br />
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Caro Williams Pierce (@therealcaro). Caro is a doctoral student who created a game for her dissertation using Little Big Planet 3. I have students working with LBP3 so it was great to get a first hand account as well as a walkthrough of the game including how it was developed. </blockquote>
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Rahul Banerjee, the creator of <a href="http://blockstud.io/">blockstud.io</a> met with our class four weeks in a row. It started with a guided tutorial to show my students how to use the 'no-code' game development environment. Rahul met with two of my classes each week and as we progressed it was evident that the input from my students was as valuable to Rahul as his instruction was to them. My students provided feedback, asked questions, and contributed ideas to features that are now in the program. Rahul was even kind enough to meet with one student from a different class who really wanted to meet him. When they met, the first words out of my student's mouth were, "I can't believe I'm really getting to meet you!". They were able to meet one on one on several occasions. Rahul is pretty awesome and my students love when he visits!</blockquote>
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John Day, one of the developers who worked on Disney Infinity met with us to discuss his career as a game designer and specifically ideas about working with Disney Infinity, one of the tools my students use to create games. </blockquote>
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Mike Watanabee, creative director (and voice of Tim!) from Brainpop (@brainpop) was kind enough to meet us from his home in Hawaii. In order to do so, he had to get up at 4am. The kids were super excited to meet with him and talk about brainpop, the process of developing the videos, and of course roared when he addressed us as Tim :) </blockquote>
We've had other visitors and I plan to continue develop these connections and allow my students to communicate directly with the experts. In fact, I have a commitments from some very exciting people in the game development industry.<br />
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Games and Learninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10525760825218991948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6499226437419643396.post-60396211254304757652015-11-26T05:36:00.004-08:002015-11-26T05:36:59.365-08:00#20PercentTuesday Week 7 Reflection<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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The excitement around #20PercentTuesday continues to grow. I am thrilled to watch the proejcts evolve and watch the students enter the class every Tuesday eager to get right to work. <br />
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There are so many projects happening and they cover a wide variety of tools, technologies, and innovative ideas. I truly believe this is the way to encourage students to discover a passion for learning and areas they may not have known they were interested in. If I can provide that opportunity for my students, I feel I have done good by them!</div>
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Below are some images of what you would see happening if you walked around my room on any given #20PercentTuesday (or lunch period for that matter)</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY6YHj88GLDDYTXCczyemqUSEwBr8KeAWosWOOrcWA2eNvPnwXyO4f-ICYjvOmqYf7k6AR8IFuQU4FOgQOiVoz7juzp7qK_sztAKMEQ_Jhq22EKCCkrTRMDAfmyME2AOhk4wF84SnuY4w/s640/blogger-image-927639351.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY6YHj88GLDDYTXCczyemqUSEwBr8KeAWosWOOrcWA2eNvPnwXyO4f-ICYjvOmqYf7k6AR8IFuQU4FOgQOiVoz7juzp7qK_sztAKMEQ_Jhq22EKCCkrTRMDAfmyME2AOhk4wF84SnuY4w/s320/blogger-image-927639351.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Creating a racing game in Disney Infinity</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvwDKIquqbKoqhZVhqewzd8tIIJbIGSQvWrlm6msI8IyAKgj9754CcxdHECQwNKZgsU97m0gtP_-N60JDzh5kfYj1y5ugFugYZ-RzKGsYKWV7d-rDgq5YvVb1aZlD7F6mzGpDw_nR3xC8/s640/blogger-image-1655636985.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvwDKIquqbKoqhZVhqewzd8tIIJbIGSQvWrlm6msI8IyAKgj9754CcxdHECQwNKZgsU97m0gtP_-N60JDzh5kfYj1y5ugFugYZ-RzKGsYKWV7d-rDgq5YvVb1aZlD7F6mzGpDw_nR3xC8/s320/blogger-image-1655636985.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Demonstrating the Go-Dough game controller in Action</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNdrgGvXEismAzoJt_KSDGy9IACmqJ3Rh4VsU4Fl0r7z3Zjf1n5u4IDETf2qqyQ2dMjqNYiMJfd0oBAkpdi2CqN-0Zb_dNna9is6ux0GnHYCZhx660Qdqk9R-xJ2DfcTMioaNrbymngU8/s640/blogger-image-2121690796.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhNdrgGvXEismAzoJt_KSDGy9IACmqJ3Rh4VsU4Fl0r7z3Zjf1n5u4IDETf2qqyQ2dMjqNYiMJfd0oBAkpdi2CqN-0Zb_dNna9is6ux0GnHYCZhx660Qdqk9R-xJ2DfcTMioaNrbymngU8/s320/blogger-image-2121690796.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Student created @snapguide #minecraft tutorial</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkcc5hyDBNt83dGDObXPnHwyikvPn63G3a5JaQsFZzA2eO1M45X36H6uatOtrRfLAu_dv4Ivx4surKi-hMn3nbca6D4Q6RKlq2DtJ_KvAfi9OtpLC73bisQUlrhay6ZoA3obDrC-jAMD4/s640/blogger-image--474954514.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkcc5hyDBNt83dGDObXPnHwyikvPn63G3a5JaQsFZzA2eO1M45X36H6uatOtrRfLAu_dv4Ivx4surKi-hMn3nbca6D4Q6RKlq2DtJ_KvAfi9OtpLC73bisQUlrhay6ZoA3obDrC-jAMD4/s320/blogger-image--474954514.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Learning to use MIT App Inventor from a YouTube tutorial: "Watch it...Build it"</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhms6LiJe3qVcyQXUP_5sKZUzF7Szxf8nexYsAkcWL2NdRnLqJiN8tG1t9tTLxWBta2eA58OpuINXP8I9zFyaJ3fGgrpneZV-hHtzZgdz7sHWsXC9r_Or3JzHdo29hYcSgfd9F7KBntccI/s640/blogger-image-2084739241.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhms6LiJe3qVcyQXUP_5sKZUzF7Szxf8nexYsAkcWL2NdRnLqJiN8tG1t9tTLxWBta2eA58OpuINXP8I9zFyaJ3fGgrpneZV-hHtzZgdz7sHWsXC9r_Or3JzHdo29hYcSgfd9F7KBntccI/s320/blogger-image-2084739241.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Installing Unreal Engine! Almost time to start building a Virtual World to explore with the Oculus Rift!</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj84LMAy5tutzop-uPQrWmfZ7IiUu4US6p8WBoDLwhwS4HVkyEgUCg8eqTa7xOmp9v0MvJs_OP_T_eQ0htMWJ_AfJZ3e-qGZ3FWFXYvvA12-680OI1izSZwswcqqB4khWVEJwAusETdpgw/s640/blogger-image-1006149727.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj84LMAy5tutzop-uPQrWmfZ7IiUu4US6p8WBoDLwhwS4HVkyEgUCg8eqTa7xOmp9v0MvJs_OP_T_eQ0htMWJ_AfJZ3e-qGZ3FWFXYvvA12-680OI1izSZwswcqqB4khWVEJwAusETdpgw/s320/blogger-image-1006149727.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sketch of house that will be built in Sketch Up and Explored with the Oculus Rift!</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV0nRCkfZdzmnCf5tDuzFPaW1rWG5D1WP_hoRCIevv3OaGRWCHCFfgM-lSOiCBuHhIcEg6rvFHxBXj_OXjeb_mklFX3r5HZVHWHrnyzyjKD9satyNyPdGEzb_JK3c9xCGF31OezPjFSAA/s640/blogger-image-742505338.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiV0nRCkfZdzmnCf5tDuzFPaW1rWG5D1WP_hoRCIevv3OaGRWCHCFfgM-lSOiCBuHhIcEg6rvFHxBXj_OXjeb_mklFX3r5HZVHWHrnyzyjKD9satyNyPdGEzb_JK3c9xCGF31OezPjFSAA/s320/blogger-image-742505338.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Programming the "brain" of a character in Project Spark</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUEHpj5DhR44S0sWiQZo7s63O7pAd-HQTs0fAMsu3NvC75VS2i5qUKI98sd6tDotZPiwfbHsoGAW0t7rJBXjJYjcHQ4zosOGBM3nc3UySUcwl-7Kzt2tjqzxF-xYziBPlho8blsnrpSmY/s640/blogger-image-1114198412.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUEHpj5DhR44S0sWiQZo7s63O7pAd-HQTs0fAMsu3NvC75VS2i5qUKI98sd6tDotZPiwfbHsoGAW0t7rJBXjJYjcHQ4zosOGBM3nc3UySUcwl-7Kzt2tjqzxF-xYziBPlho8blsnrpSmY/s320/blogger-image-1114198412.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Creating a Text based Adventure using Twine</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijg4vJgFCoELLBf6TnNQIHUYQfasPYcByPtAN7XtcR89q99gtzCt1sYoR15nKqcT7SdaIpk-Zl1xFN1rcIdEKSSyZ6IaGnztjhpuyA68Q79gWY2C3VlExGja2gUKie7lNrAK_ac6nmDaE/s640/blogger-image--817701643.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijg4vJgFCoELLBf6TnNQIHUYQfasPYcByPtAN7XtcR89q99gtzCt1sYoR15nKqcT7SdaIpk-Zl1xFN1rcIdEKSSyZ6IaGnztjhpuyA68Q79gWY2C3VlExGja2gUKie7lNrAK_ac6nmDaE/s320/blogger-image--817701643.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Getting started with SketchUp</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsXFt_IjCLiGXx4zgF2KcJBfYKN4hbc3PCpkWViNdlf-eCDaI-k409i8dAFW_TYq7Bk6-_bgKjE2P14biD_qFFS1-pKUijcCBbNY90utn_CHBGkW-s4w316PvkQvgWAjcjOEiMh7UESxU/s640/blogger-image-1430500209.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsXFt_IjCLiGXx4zgF2KcJBfYKN4hbc3PCpkWViNdlf-eCDaI-k409i8dAFW_TYq7Bk6-_bgKjE2P14biD_qFFS1-pKUijcCBbNY90utn_CHBGkW-s4w316PvkQvgWAjcjOEiMh7UESxU/s320/blogger-image-1430500209.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Programming Command Blocks in Minecraft</td></tr>
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There was much more happening, but this gives a nice idea of the kinds of projects students have been working on this week. </div>
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Here are a few student reflections from the week:</div>
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<i><br /><br />1. My partner and I are working with the Oculus Rift<br /> <br />2. So far we have learned the basics of what SketchUp and Unity and how they work, we are still looking at vdeos of how to and good ways to make a basic house </i></blockquote>
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<i>3. The progress we have made is, we made on a piece of paper the house and items and downloaded sketchup but we still are watching and looking at videos to get a good hold of what we are going to do<br /> <br />4.Next steps: Hopefully starting the basics of the house then advancing to the hard details of the house.</i></blockquote>
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<i>5. Honestly I feel the nerves and excitement thinking about the day we get to play it and thats my real aha moment just seeing that day</i></blockquote>
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<i>1. The tool that I am working with is twine to create a text based adventure.</i> </blockquote>
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<i> 2. So far, I have learned to code a text based adventure and do it fast. I have also learned how to organize and create a text based adventure game.</i> </blockquote>
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<i>3. My progress so far is I created the outline or brainstorm in popplet. I have also began programming my actual game in twine. Yesterday in class, I continued programming and making my game. I am about halfway done with making my game.</i> </blockquote>
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<i>4. Moving Foward, I plan on just finishing my original game. I will then ask for feedback and make corrections to the game accordingly. Once my game is revised and finished, I will publish it for the class to play.</i> </blockquote>
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<i>5. One aha moment that I have had was when I realized I had to become fast at coding each individual part in my story. Another aha moment I had was when I realized that I needed to learn how to save and upload my story to google drive so that I could do additional work at home.</i></blockquote>
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At this point, students are at different phases of their projects. It is awesome to see them taking ownership of their learning. I am constantly reminded of how kids learn in informal learning spaces (youtube, tutorials, wikis, peers, etc.). The 20%Time Passion Project model is one of the best ways to nurture authentic student learning. Stay tuned for more reflections and student blog posts.<br />
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Games and Learninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10525760825218991948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6499226437419643396.post-35664402207835842592015-11-14T11:57:00.000-08:002015-11-14T11:57:11.206-08:00#20PercentTuesday: Week 5 reflections<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
During week 5 my class was on their own for #20PercentTuesday as I was at #iNACOL presenting on Building Bridges in the EdTech Ecosystem representing #EdTechBridge and Teacher voice along with Katrina Stevens (@katranistevens1) and Kara Chesal (@KCintheNYC). The conference was great but I was eager to see how my kids did as they moved forward on their Passion Projects.<div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuBxojuXE3gitkG_wWLIwHMo0BSD_v1u576ruc2TkwpLS0oa33fTEJRyIXJ6Dlx06BPxuD6maVUZ0n7Yg62-U8GCweVzdft3yENUCUX-YPRq56KEBthsEfh2sr5vX-x8MM27eEk-HHKDw/s1600/genius_hour.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuBxojuXE3gitkG_wWLIwHMo0BSD_v1u576ruc2TkwpLS0oa33fTEJRyIXJ6Dlx06BPxuD6maVUZ0n7Yg62-U8GCweVzdft3yENUCUX-YPRq56KEBthsEfh2sr5vX-x8MM27eEk-HHKDw/s200/genius_hour.png" width="200" /></a></div>
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Since I was absent it occurred to me that I should create a way for students to reflect weekly as a means of documenting their learning and also focusing their efforts as time management for long term projects (especially for middle school students) can be very challenging.</div>
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I created a quest in 3dGameLab (now Rezzly) that repeats each week for these reflections. I am asking students to either share their thoughts in a simple quest submission or as a blog post. I would love for students to start blogging about this experience but don't want to require that right now as I want to respect their work flow. I did offer extra XP for blog posts however :)</div>
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As a guide for their reflection, I offered the following ideas (they don't have to stick to these but it provides a guide as they start their weekly reflections:</div>
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<li style="list-style: disc; margin: 5px 12px; padding: 0px;">What product / tool are you working with?</li>
<li style="list-style: disc; margin: 5px 12px; padding: 0px;">Share what you have learned so far through the experience.</li>
<li style="list-style: disc; margin: 5px 12px; padding: 0px;">What progres have you made so far?</li>
<li style="list-style: disc; margin: 5px 12px; padding: 0px;">What is your plan for moving forward (next steps and big plan)?</li>
<li style="list-style: disc; margin: 5px 12px; padding: 0px;">interesting a ha moments you have had through the experience of taking ownership of your learning.</li>
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<span style="font-family: Roboto, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14.4px;">You've heard enough from me. Here are a selection of student responses: #stuvoice FTW!</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg2aRHQEMxmixPGKjKxeEfiUIRLYxQQ5em1tKHhpJ38lEFbuMwIYs9nfDabVDL0rJ7rsKNRuCcqIIGJ5rrtBv_uiyg28f6yCPxs5PiHmJdb-VnJKTwG-5QrAfn4KJDltARHcKJzSPprio/s1600/pi_led.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg2aRHQEMxmixPGKjKxeEfiUIRLYxQQ5em1tKHhpJ38lEFbuMwIYs9nfDabVDL0rJ7rsKNRuCcqIIGJ5rrtBv_uiyg28f6yCPxs5PiHmJdb-VnJKTwG-5QrAfn4KJDltARHcKJzSPprio/s320/pi_led.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>I am working with the raspberry pi, and so far throughout my experience I've learned about syntax and coding in python, and how to turn it on. So far we have turned on the computer and have begun working with circuits. Our next steps will be using the circuits to connect and turn on an LED light through the raspberry pi. My first and only aha moment so far was when I was able to turn on the pi through moving the plug from one outlet to another. ~ yes - first rule of tech support... check all connections!</i></blockquote>
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<i><br /></i><i>Raspberry Pi</i><i><br /></i><i>I have learned how to use scratch and python to perform tasks.</i><i><br /></i><i>I have completed my watch it build and have started to plan my original robot.</i><i><br /></i><i>I will finish my plan by this week, and then continue.</i><i><br /></i><i>When I finally built my tower using minecraft pi, that took me 1 hour, I felt really happy. </i></blockquote>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9_kra2NYbChUgnNNp0nC9iw61q-hVQEk7bdGu-KjK22g9hLTmFRqyGhWnVJTevwee7SdPynEhtU4DbOWoVo0kQ_i4wsDcM_hhPPgyOa6JDyklioVl_zGOdg7yHRsBEX9L4C3S3UjeKhs/s1600/spark.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9_kra2NYbChUgnNNp0nC9iw61q-hVQEk7bdGu-KjK22g9hLTmFRqyGhWnVJTevwee7SdPynEhtU4DbOWoVo0kQ_i4wsDcM_hhPPgyOa6JDyklioVl_zGOdg7yHRsBEX9L4C3S3UjeKhs/s320/spark.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i><br /></i><i>I am working with Project Spark. I have leaned how to program enemies and characters and also how to place objects down. We have placed many enemies down and built an arena. Our next plan is to build a tower for the main character to climb. Our biggest aha moment was when we learned how to program enemies! </i></blockquote>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>We are working with project spark on the xbox one. I have learned that coding is important because every little detail is important to the game. Chris and I have been able to create a world with an enemy that tries to kill us. Our next step is creating castles for the setting. I have realized that this could potentially become a popular game if we do it correctly</i>.</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>I am working with project spark. I have learned how to use the tools and add characters and enemies to fight. Also i learned how to pick up a bow and shoot at enemies. So far Max and I have created a forest and are beginning to make enemies to fight against. Moving forward we are planning on creating levels and more enemies to have to fight as we go on. Also we would like to go on with our story line. So far an Aha moment that i had was when Max and i did not know why the enemies were not fighting back but it was because they had not been programmed yet.</i></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Well for starters i am working with Project Spark. I have learned how to program my characters to do unique things all from scratch. John and I have made very good progress in our own game. We are still planning the storyline a bit but we are starting to program things now. Our plan moving forward is to complete our game or at least a prototype. One aha moment that i have had so far is programing an enemy from scartch and how many coding things you need to put into him. </i></span></blockquote>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_yvd90feYnXKG_VvXqW-SRY9pyyr31sox5NM0hYof-zKOk8nY5LjDO_YxfY9YZn4kiflxx18kGHQJ64_GAAl7qbyiu5WKWV8J10Azm2iiJzehHphC2hehTa7na40XeetKSVx1CpoO8bk/s1600/disney-infinity.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="241" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_yvd90feYnXKG_VvXqW-SRY9pyyr31sox5NM0hYof-zKOk8nY5LjDO_YxfY9YZn4kiflxx18kGHQJ64_GAAl7qbyiu5WKWV8J10Azm2iiJzehHphC2hehTa7na40XeetKSVx1CpoO8bk/s320/disney-infinity.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span id="docs-internal-guid-cbde5d7e-076f-c5d8-5b08-62158ffc118b"><span style="font-size: 14.6667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>The tool that i am working with is Disney Infinity, during this experience i have learned a lot like how to make a race track and how to build a pyramid and much other things. We have almost finished the outer part of the pyramid and we are going to make a interior, we have also built a couple small racetracks. Like i said we plan on making a complicated interior with a tomb to be decorative. We at first had no idea how to delete stuff and place stuff down correctly but now we have figured that out.</i></span></span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><a href="http://blogginwithryan.weebly.com/" target="_blank">Bloggin' With Ryan</a>-----Disney Infinity!</i></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Today I would like to talk about one of my favorite times of the week; 20% Tuesday! 20% time is a time in class that we have to try different things, such as using the Makey Makey, Rasberry Pi, Project Spark, etc. The one I chose to use is Disney Infinity. For those of you that don't know about the Infinity, it is basically a Disney game where you have the ability to create almost whatever you want, or you can follow a story. Start by simply placing one of the many heroes onto the base and watch the hero appear on the screen. I decided to make a motorcycle race track with unique obstacles and cool scenery. So far during this experience I have learned a ton about the frustration and concentration it takes to make a large build like this. If you are not focused it will drastically slow you down, and when you don't have enough time to do what you want, it can get frustrating. So far I have made the outline, and now I am starting to add in obstacles and different types of terrain such as loops, things blocking the way, and more. The next thing I plan to do is add in a section where you must get off your bike and run through a maze. Along the way you will encounter many challenges that I have not decided on yet. Most important of all, fun will be scattered throughout the whole map. One interesting experience I have encountered so far is realizing that just because it is on a track doesn't mean it has to be just a race... As you can tell by my big plan I have already deeply thought about this. I know that this is going to be a long journey, but in the end it will be totally worth it.</i></span></blockquote>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHdG2m0qOax366Np-k1kpSClPgcCPIp5YFzFUKFVq7QmsWuwYkHOwNNNRc4j7MsuhWi8XLTgdGxc8ZCSNEMuUFGw4fAH08Clc8Kmu0QJ1n-kLuXAlJgTGshAhR4lV42v5wMGcBgSzR3_k/s1600/twine.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHdG2m0qOax366Np-k1kpSClPgcCPIp5YFzFUKFVq7QmsWuwYkHOwNNNRc4j7MsuhWi8XLTgdGxc8ZCSNEMuUFGw4fAH08Clc8Kmu0QJ1n-kLuXAlJgTGshAhR4lV42v5wMGcBgSzR3_k/s200/twine.png" width="188" /></a></div>
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<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">The product that i am working with is the Text Based Adventure, and the tool i am using is <a href="http://www.twinery.org/" target="_blank">Twinery</a>. I have learned that the computer takes everything literally and thast you have to be very careful what you program because it might interperet it differently than what what you want because it takes everything literally. The progres i have made so far is that i have completed my story and have made it visable to the public. My plan for moving forward is that i might start with the Oculus rift and create my own personilized room of the civil war explaining what it was like to live back then. Some aha moments i have had with twine is that you can tell it to do something and then when you play it it can show up with something differne tot make the story telling more realistic. Also i experienced that you have to name your boxes different or else it will think that everything is connected to that boss, when really you want to connect it to a different one. If you don't do this then the game won't work </span></i></blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Thomas and I are working with the Oculus Rift. So far we have learned how to use the Oculus and how start out our house to make our game with youtube videos. So far we have designed the game that you can play in the house and the sketch of the house on paper. We are next planning to start making the house in SketchUp! What has been most intresting is playing the Oculus and seeing how the Virtual Reality is, it was really cool and fun to see and experience. It was also pretty intresting to see how people make these awesome houses, when I was watching their videos on youtube. It was really crazy to see that you can make a house and be able to go in it, on a computer!</i></span></blockquote>
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Games and Learninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10525760825218991948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6499226437419643396.post-90807722562010957142015-11-04T04:43:00.005-08:002015-11-04T04:43:53.496-08:00#20PercentTuesday: Week 4 reflections<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I wake up on Tuesdays pretty excited to see what's in store for the day. I believe my students are also looking forward to #20PercentTuesday. The past few weeks have been great, but it was clear that it took a little time to get into a groove. I think we may be past that! The kids are starting to come in ready to work on their projects. The routine now starts with me taking attendance and asking the kids to share with me what they plan to work on. I ask them to be specific. The answer is not just 'my 20% time project' or 'Project Spark', but rather a specific goal for their progress for the day. My intent is to help them start the period with some degree of focus. For middle school students, taking a minute to think about what they plan to focus on is a good thing. Come to think of it, for a 46 year old teacher, taking some time at checkpoints in my day to think about what I want to focus on is a good thing.<br />
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The buzz around the room is exhilarating. I shared some tweets with the #20PercentTuesday hashtag and my wife came back with a couple of great tweets...<br />
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I think we all need some 20% Time in our lives! The truth behind the idea is to let passion drive the learning. Isn't that what truly inspires creativity and joy in learning?<br />
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The kids were very excited. It was fun to walk around and see what they were doing and provide some degree of support. Quite honestly it was more about celebrating learning as I wandered around checking out what they were doing and talking with the students about their projects.<br />
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Most kids were working on the "Watch it... Build it" activity at this point. The first task is for students to find videos or print tutorials to learn from as they get started working with the technology or tool they chose. One of our quests in 3dGameLab asks students to reflect on why they chose the particular tutorial they did. Here are some of their responses...<br />
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcO-9scGvJs </blockquote>
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I would like to do the oculus rift and create a cool room that I can use as virtual reality. I want to use the oculus because I love virtual reality because I have seen many videos of it and I really want to experience it too. </blockquote>
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I chose this activity because virtual reality has become so much more popular thanks to the oculus rift. It would be very cool to experience using this because everybody has told me about it and I have seen videos of gameplay on the oculus rift and the rooms/games people create are just astonishing. I would love to create my own unique room because that would be really cool to think to yourself that you created your own virtual reality room.</blockquote>
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJpPOBxenks</blockquote>
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I'm going to try to create quests for my game. I will use project spark to create simple quests that give small rewards when completed. I chose this activity because I will recreate a Legend of Zelda game. All Zelda games have small quests. Interacting with the players unlock quests and moves the story forward. The more quests I make, the more the story and the game structure will be similar to a Legend of Zelda game.</blockquote>
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https://www.raspberrypi.org/help/quick-start-guide/ </blockquote>
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https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/usage/python/README.md </blockquote>
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The project I chose to recreate through 'watch it build it' was programming python to say me name and age in rasberry pi. I found it really cool to try and do this. I have always been interested in progamming, so this was something I could that was awesome.</blockquote>
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I am planning to make a house that we can walk through with the oculus. I am watching videos about SketchUp and Unity to learn more about the programs to continue my mission of making a house. I chose this activity because I know im going to love it and I think it is so cool to do this too. </blockquote>
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAef7ZJ7ViI</blockquote>
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcO-9scGvJs</blockquote>
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http://www.roadtovr.com/guide-how-to-install-minecraft-oculus-rift-dk2-minecrift/</blockquote>
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How to play minecraft on the oculus rift</blockquote>
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Because playing minecraft while being inside of minecraft like its real life is the coolest thing ever</blockquote>
I can't think of a better way to wrap up this blog post than by sharing some pictures and video from our day.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Learning Project Spark from an online tutorial</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Getting ready to apply new knowledge in Project Spark</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrPqgcV0zicZRASmarZVhYpUy_Tv26s5LesxeU899zYoUhuvkkDb9Fv4FBr9RwipYy8aDhF_QWAuVt1NBPXygpXoke2bmDRq1gBdkFMthz2QLAA6aP36DDgmevwiZURSrdrSZJBqNx7JM/s1600/IMG_3742.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrPqgcV0zicZRASmarZVhYpUy_Tv26s5LesxeU899zYoUhuvkkDb9Fv4FBr9RwipYy8aDhF_QWAuVt1NBPXygpXoke2bmDRq1gBdkFMthz2QLAA6aP36DDgmevwiZURSrdrSZJBqNx7JM/s320/IMG_3742.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Creating a game world in Disney Infinity</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvogu_G53e2S8vVrmLJ7LtobfE64Af0EAEBnGKbV2ounvlISCVjsLClzlN0MLl1wzGc9j-se9KaXivdV1nfpfCLV1c7s9Oe4CwQ5y5N5-bgtoXlco4vIfHunb2Uws8XlLkA7WiuHYwtuo/s1600/IMG_3744.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvogu_G53e2S8vVrmLJ7LtobfE64Af0EAEBnGKbV2ounvlISCVjsLClzlN0MLl1wzGc9j-se9KaXivdV1nfpfCLV1c7s9Oe4CwQ5y5N5-bgtoXlco4vIfHunb2Uws8XlLkA7WiuHYwtuo/s320/IMG_3744.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Creating a game controller with the MakeyMakey and Playdough</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI0eTrPDbrZYAmVZQzvAduNNVX_-RSLMq87ihFRYeyNQ7EhZ1bMCXq8RsqWxOHaIR7jYWVty9oMnfVdFk6ZioQ4Q0hhbrijzXkKyu9HjQSDBAkX3k4WpYE0Dl6OxN489grsEvIBqi4ovw/s1600/IMG_3745.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI0eTrPDbrZYAmVZQzvAduNNVX_-RSLMq87ihFRYeyNQ7EhZ1bMCXq8RsqWxOHaIR7jYWVty9oMnfVdFk6ZioQ4Q0hhbrijzXkKyu9HjQSDBAkX3k4WpYE0Dl6OxN489grsEvIBqi4ovw/s320/IMG_3745.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Working with Redstone in Minecraft</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZj8evBF50-RdYFZL7Sl64ETDA15NPfY_ug3gEKLPNc1V3PhSHy-ior5O-xFbb9896A-QUBSRCeFsiNPykKCuOnu2YJC6khentMFDveA6E6kR_R9vNcbr0SK-Xv0ImW6UoCb-DCdQ8hvI/s1600/IMG_3753.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZj8evBF50-RdYFZL7Sl64ETDA15NPfY_ug3gEKLPNc1V3PhSHy-ior5O-xFbb9896A-QUBSRCeFsiNPykKCuOnu2YJC6khentMFDveA6E6kR_R9vNcbr0SK-Xv0ImW6UoCb-DCdQ8hvI/s320/IMG_3753.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Testing the game controller with the MakeyMakey and Playdough</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4TbxtXPCgQdazSLDaqmWnIHFxGAXIIjSA49hhL5HL-sXOcdsGeBbX9HxfPx9yQvxz43jRibTDcweOW_momrj1axA0Hha614Mm_JsvObCMXysPTbHzC3Qks7Pll7WVba-zEP8hjHF82iQ/s1600/IMG_3760.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4TbxtXPCgQdazSLDaqmWnIHFxGAXIIjSA49hhL5HL-sXOcdsGeBbX9HxfPx9yQvxz43jRibTDcweOW_momrj1axA0Hha614Mm_JsvObCMXysPTbHzC3Qks7Pll7WVba-zEP8hjHF82iQ/s320/IMG_3760.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">More Redstone in Minecraft</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIAnIyjAx0B03KQ_K3u8-5JW2Y0La_gEm7BRZt-seY8JKaUqAzKyFAvFORlhZaqb5WRukWQSFGRvmjt3iHt3DZPawJw-K75l6wZth9yxtl9OOTz9oiHLcqxXPZA06sPGpBj_syc2KJZIk/s1600/IMG_3752.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIAnIyjAx0B03KQ_K3u8-5JW2Y0La_gEm7BRZt-seY8JKaUqAzKyFAvFORlhZaqb5WRukWQSFGRvmjt3iHt3DZPawJw-K75l6wZth9yxtl9OOTz9oiHLcqxXPZA06sPGpBj_syc2KJZIk/s320/IMG_3752.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Further crafting the game controller design</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Almost done!</td></tr>
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Games and Learninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10525760825218991948noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6499226437419643396.post-10701820406734680072015-10-27T18:11:00.003-07:002015-10-27T18:11:49.979-07:00#20PercentTuesday: Week 3 Reflections<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Today marked week 3 of our 20% time / genius hour project. The learning space was a buzz during my three 8th grade game design and development elective courses. Kids are settling into the idea but it is still new to them so class starts with a bit of confusion until everyone is actively engaged in their project. I see this diminishing already and anticipate that over the next few weeks kids will come right in and get started without knowing whether or not I am even there :) <br />
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It's very interesting to truly put the learning in the students hands. There is an inclination for students to want (dare I say expect) a lot of attention when they don't know exactly what to do. The true humor (after the fact) comes in watching them fumble because they cannot figure out how to turn on the TV or set up the right input on the TV to connect to the device they are working with. It literally took a pair of students 20 minutes (and a few hints from me although I was VERY stingy in giving assistance) to get the raspberry pi connected and showing up on one of the TVs in the room. Ultimately a third student came to their aid. It was little things like the TV input, needing to take the HDMI cable out of the Xbox360 to use it with the pi, but the best was the fact that they tried to plug the mini usb into the Ethernet port in the raspberry pi and wondered why it wasn't powering up. This is one of those moments when you really want to help them but need to let go and embrace the learning that is taking place through the process. After all, if these kids got a raspberry pi in the mail they would be sure to figure out how to get it hooked up at home without my assistance.<br />
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Some of the happenings around the room included students making progress with their watch it build it projects. To get oriented to the chosen technology or tool, students were tasked with finding a tutorial (video or print) to guide them to use the tool to recreate something. There were kids programming in <a href="http://welcome.projectspark.com/" target="_blank">project spark</a> to get dragons to fight back if attacked by their player. That was pretty cool to see! Other kids were building worlds and racetracks in <a href="https://infinity.disney.com/home" target="_blank">Disney Infinity</a>. Several teams using the <a href="https://www.raspberrypi.org/" target="_blank">raspberry pi </a>(once they got it connected to the TV) were programming in python and celebrating the fruits of their labor. Anyone who programs can attest to the fact that it is pretty gratifying to see "Hello, World" displayed on a screen when you were responsible for typing and executing the code. Other students were working with <a href="http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/" target="_blank">MIT App Inventor</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfQqh7iCcOU" target="_blank">makeymakey</a>,<a href="https://developer.apple.com/xcode/" target="_blank"> XCode</a>, <a href="http://twinery.org/" target="_blank">Twine</a>, and a variety of other tools. <br />
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I'd like to close today's post with some responses to a reflection question posed to the kids. When students were choosing the tool they would like to use, they were asked to respond to the question:<br />
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<i>What do you think about the idea of extending your learning on your own in order to truly take learning into your own hands?</i><br />
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Most of the responses were great. I will share some now and continue to sprinkle them in here and there through the year...<br />
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<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Extending learning on my own is important. It teaches students to be resourceful and test and look for solutions on their own. Taking learning into my own hands means that there are no guidelines I must follow, and it gives me lots of creative options to pursue as I learn on my own. There are lots of possibilities for learning when it is directed only by the creator's mind, and two people who both have similar ideas in the beginning may have different creative directions and different final products.</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>The idea of extending our learning on our own is exciting because then we can work at our own pace and not be held back or left behind. </i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>It is an interesting challenge. It requires you to be motivated. You will also need to be more creative than just following instructions. </i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I think that doing so will help us learn responsibility and it will let us take things that truely interest us and will motivate us to continue working and give it our best effort.</i></blockquote>
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I'll stop there for now. I hope you are enjoying following along on our journey. I am a huge proponent of choice / passion based learning and see this project as a great opportunity to empower students in the process<br />
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Games and Learninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10525760825218991948noreply@blogger.com