Game-Making in a Fourth Grade Art Classroom using Gamestar Mechanic (original) (raw)

Using Gamestar Mechanic with Elementary Art students: An exploration of one teacher’s experiences.

Games are an emerging form of self-expression and communication. Considered plebeian, games have been ignored as an art from. Use of video games in the classroom incorporates and connects to many 21st century skills, helping students understand visual culture using something they are already familiar with – video games. Integrating games into the classroom curriculum applies current research to teaching and leaning. Game making in the art classroom develops students’ ability to think non-linearly and to explore color, shape, balance, composition, rhythm, and storytelling, providing transformative experiences. Players learn basic game design principles, learning how to design games by playing and fixing games. Players can make their own games and post them online, receive feedback from classmates, teachers, and other players, and then revise and repost. This paper discusses how this researcher used the video game Gamestar Mechanic in an elementary art classroom and supported an art teacher in learning how to use this tool.

Exploring the Use of Game Making Across the School Curriculum

INTED2017 Proceedings, 2017

Computer games as part of education is a well-established topic for research, suggesting that creating games is linked to a range of cognitive and behavioural outcomes. Creating games in all subject disciplines is becoming increasingly possible due to the increasingly higher status of computing in schools across Europe and the prevalence of visual programming languages such as Scratch and Pocket Code. The use of games within education is not new; in a systematic review of 129 papers [1] found that playing games impacts across a range of areas including engagement, cognitive ability and, most commonly, knowledge acquisition and content understanding. However, while research has thus far examined game play and game based learning in education there is limited work focussing on the process of game creation as a method of classroom teaching. This is a prospect which is increasingly possible with the introduction of visual programming languages such as Scratch [2] and Pocket Code. It is suggested that playful learning through computer games could stimulate students' intrinsic motivation ([3] and that knowledge creation can emerge through the construction of artefacts in a playful learning environment via the co-creation of games [4]. The research presented in this paper is from a pilot study examining the impact of game making in traditional primary and secondary school classrooms (5-18 years) in the United Kingdom (UK). The research, funded by Horizon 2020, is part of a wider European project; No-one Left Behind. In the UK the project has introduced game making into disciplines such as Religious Education, Science and History. Data indicates that although not all students found this a positive experience, computational thinking skills have increased, and students, disaffected with their learning, have re-engaged with learning, increasing their persistence and resulting in a deeper understanding of subject knowledge. In addition initial results suggest that game making has the potential to increase engagement with classroom learning and lead to increased learner satisfaction within lessons. Non-computing teachers have gained in confidence in developing game creation in their subject discipline, increasing their awareness of computational thinking. Barriers identified include teacher familiarity with programming as a means to teach non-STEM subject knowledge, a potential to decrease knowledge acquisition during the process of familiarisation with the teaching tool and a need for software developers to consider design for children with SEND. The project is changing the learning environment and emerging pedagogy has been identified which will be shared in this paper. As a result of the study lesson resources have been created for teachers to use across disciplines which are now available via the project URL; these will be shared in this paper.

Towards Creative Pedagogy: Empowering Students to Develop Games

Due to social, economic, and technological changes in our society creativity is nowadays seen as basic survival and success factor. Thus, innovation, creativity and production of media should be emphasized also in the school of the future. However, current schooling system tends to produce consumers of media instead of creative problem solvers, critical thinkers, and producers of media. At this point also educators and policy makers should be creative and introduce innovative learning solutions and practices that support the development of creativity and 21 century skills. This paper replies to this call by considering learning by developing games as one of future learning strategies. Learning by developing games is not totally new idea, but the research has only begun to explore the possibilities that this pedagogical strategy provides. In this article we introduce a new game authoring environment MAGOS that is developed according to the framework of creative pedagogy. The framework of creative pedagogy comprises of three interrelated elements of creative teaching, teaching for creativity, and creative learning. From these three elements we derived eight design principles that guided the development of MAGOS environment. MAGOS supports creative teaching practices by providing different tools for planning and for teacher participation. Teaching for creativity is supported by offering an imaginative and innovative learning environment and tools with which a teacher can support students' creative and constructive processes. MAGOS include multiple elements that promote students' collaborative game development that is supposed to enhance co-creation of knowledge. MAGOS requires a joint effort for game development and enables building on each others' ideas through sharing and remixing other students' existing work. MAGOS also provides a tool that helps students to generate novel ideas for their joint game development.

EDUCATING CHILDREN THROUGH GAME MAKING ACTIVITY

This paper discuss on a field of children and learning while designing games using an educational game authoring tool. Two ideas will be proposed in this paper. Firstly, the educational benefits of abstract, algorithmic representations for game development and secondly, the requirements for computational media environments that promote creative thinking and problem solving skills among children. A game can be seen as a system in which players interact with a virtual environment governed by game rules and game mechanics from which the gameplay eventually emerges. The paper will illustrate its points with regard to a specific media environment, Squeak Etoys. This was used in game making workshops conducted by the authors, and demonstrates the possibilities offered by the tool for children to learn and explore powerful ideas while creating games.

New perspectives on learning through (game) design

Proceedings of the …, 2008

This session will explore different approaches to the use of computer game design in formal/informal learning environments. Game design is becoming a popular strategy for enhancing young people's interest and skills with computer technology, and for purposes ranging from deepening their understanding of scientific principles to fostering critical media literacy. The participants will present research findings that highlight similarities and differences in tools, pedagogies, purposes, and outcomes of game design activities. Game design is often presumed to be appealing to learners who ordinarily might not be motivated to learn through traditional instruction, and we will give particular attention to the significance of race, class, and gender in student engagement and learning through design.

Game design as an educational pedagogy

In this paper, the researchers explored the use of homemade PowerPoint games as a pedagogy strategy. This quasi-experimental study examined whether there were performance differences between students in a class that utilized the teachers' traditional methods of reviewing for a unit exam and students in a second class that utilized homemade PowerPoint games. The analysis of variance indicated that there was no statistically significant difference in the performance or the level of improvement between the two classes, which may have been due to the small sample size. These results are consistent with other studies of homemade PowerPoint games.

Design Thinking, Game Design, and School Subjects: What is the Connection

ECGBL 2019 Proceedings, 2019

If you want to learn how to become more creative, better at collaboration, or want to develop your critical thinking skills playing games can be a powerful activity. If you want to be even surer, then build a game. This was the conclusion of a review performed by Qian and Clark (2016) on how Game-Based Learning can develop 21st Century Skills. Understanding relations between the broad categories of "learning", "design", and "games" is crucial in the research project Game-Based Learning in the 21st Century (GBL21.aau.dk), where we introduce game design activities through 24 teaching units for three subjects respectively Math, Science, and Danish. However, finding meaningful relations between design processes, game tools, and school subjects have proven to be a challenging task. In order to handle this challenge, our paper describes existing research on how to design games as a learning activity. The contribution of the paper is to provide a better understanding of the relations between the three domains of design thinking (DT), game tools/activities, and curriculum in order to develop, game design activities, which are relevant to teaching subjects. The contribution is an insight into research in game design as an approach to teaching; as well as, a review of relevant theories on designing as learning activity, and a discussion of how to implement these approaches in teaching.