We're Teaching Elements of Fiction Through Interactive Gaming
We are a group of 8th grade Advanced Language Arts students who have been involved in exploring Twain's classic novel, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. We liked it so much, that we thought it would be the perfect fit for our video game design project that Mrs. Smoke and the rest of the Arts Partners team members explored June 2012.
What's all been involved? Just like professional gaming projects, each of us have used our strengths to pull of the different games.
Phase 1 - Read the NovelFor six weeks, we journeyed through Twain's St. Petersburg, MO and extensively studied the ins and outs of Tom's adventures with Huck Finn, Joe Harper, Becky, and the other beloved characters. We explored the elements of fiction such as plot, subplots, conflict, character analysis, symbolism, theme, motive, and perspective to study not only Twain's writing style, but how these elements bring a story to life and how each of us can relate to the characters. Every one of us saw a bit of ourselves in Tom, Becky, and Huck, and we all could relate to the human condition these characters experienced.
Phase 2 - Explore the Gaming Side of Learning
Yep, we do love our games. Whether it's the coolest app on our mobile devices or the latest release for our gaming consoles, each of us enjoys doing a little gaming now and then - and guess what? So do most people our age around the world. What a perfect opportunity for us to not only explore the "edutainment" concept for ourselves, but share it with others. The only problem was to consider how to get started. Luckily, Mrs. Smoke helped us connect with experts from Arts Partners and Mr. Maves' high school art design students in Portland, Oregon.
Phase 3 - Collaborate Locally and Globally
Our project truly launched with the fortunate opportunity of having Mr. Jack Lew visit our school and discuss the video game industry. We were amazed at how many people are involved in creating one popular video game. Would you believe some games have hundreds of behind the scenes folks? It's true! Sketch artists, modelers, lighting artists, sound technicians, actors, programers, testers, marketing, and finance - the list is sounds closer to the credits of a Hollywood movie. We thought - this is perfect since ultimately, video gaming is digital storytelling with a new medium. We are a language arts crew of students studying how stories are crafted, so we'll look at writing a story in a new light.
Immediately following Mr. Lew's presentation, we Skyped with Mark Van Langeveld of Utah University. Mr. Van Langeveld has created professional games and now teaches video game design to college students. He was wonderful in getting our ideas rolling with gaming possibilities and helping us look at Twain's work with a new perspective.
Phase 4 - Be Creative and Develop Our Digital StoriesIt was time to go to work, but we needed to start with getting our ideas down on paper. For two or three class periods we simply brainstormed - idea after idea to determine what would make a great game. We promised to stay true to Twain's novel and create challenging yet entertaining experiences for our soon be game testers. Through this process, we sketched ideas on large paper, held class meetings and presentations to pitch our ideas to one another, and determined how we could ultimately provide a digital tour of the novel.
Google Drive and Edmodo were integral to the success of this phase. Each team created a shared folder inside of Google Drive. Every sketch, brainstormed note, photograph and more were shared in this folder letting every team member access files even if one was absent.
Phase 5 - Learn the Software
Another couple of wonderful collaborators from Arts Partners were Mrs. Stacey Scholfield and Mrs. Skylar Lovelace. These two wonderful ladies prepared us with tutorials on how to create both maze and platform games in Game Maker Lite - a free gaming software found at yoyogames.com. Stacey spent a couple of days showing us the ropes of the software so we could go back to our projects and expand them further.
Additionally, we needed a software that would help us create sprites (the animated characters in the game). We could have used the Adobe Creative Suite, but it's quite costly and we needed an entry level tool for our purposes. Mrs. Smoke found Inkscape, which is an open source software that works very similarly to Adobe Illustrator and has wonderful get started tutorials.
Phase 6 - Collaborate with High School Partner Class in Portland, Oregon
We had the fortunate opportunity to partner with Mr. Maves' class in Portland. These students are taking our hand drawn main characters and converting them into digital art. Through Skype calls and digital sharing, these high school students are truly taking our sketches and bringing them to life.
Phase 7 - Feel the Beat
Without a doubt, this was one phase we really enjoyed exploring. Another wonderful expert. Mr. Richard Crowson brought his banjo and guitar into class to provide a history lesson of pre-Civil War music, and even improvised some tunes we could use in our games. It was an awesome day to spend with "Banjo Man"!
In addition to Mr. Crowson's expertise, we have been using our own iPhones and iPads with the Garageband App to become our own Foley Artists. From making tracks of footsteps to rolling marbles to dripping water, we have been working hard to get just the perfect sound for our games.
Phase 8 - Program, Program, Program
Now that we have our ideas solid, sprites drawn, and sounds made, we are currently in the programming phase. More to come in this area.
What's all been involved? Just like professional gaming projects, each of us have used our strengths to pull of the different games.
Phase 1 - Read the NovelFor six weeks, we journeyed through Twain's St. Petersburg, MO and extensively studied the ins and outs of Tom's adventures with Huck Finn, Joe Harper, Becky, and the other beloved characters. We explored the elements of fiction such as plot, subplots, conflict, character analysis, symbolism, theme, motive, and perspective to study not only Twain's writing style, but how these elements bring a story to life and how each of us can relate to the characters. Every one of us saw a bit of ourselves in Tom, Becky, and Huck, and we all could relate to the human condition these characters experienced.
Phase 2 - Explore the Gaming Side of Learning
Yep, we do love our games. Whether it's the coolest app on our mobile devices or the latest release for our gaming consoles, each of us enjoys doing a little gaming now and then - and guess what? So do most people our age around the world. What a perfect opportunity for us to not only explore the "edutainment" concept for ourselves, but share it with others. The only problem was to consider how to get started. Luckily, Mrs. Smoke helped us connect with experts from Arts Partners and Mr. Maves' high school art design students in Portland, Oregon.
Phase 3 - Collaborate Locally and Globally
Our project truly launched with the fortunate opportunity of having Mr. Jack Lew visit our school and discuss the video game industry. We were amazed at how many people are involved in creating one popular video game. Would you believe some games have hundreds of behind the scenes folks? It's true! Sketch artists, modelers, lighting artists, sound technicians, actors, programers, testers, marketing, and finance - the list is sounds closer to the credits of a Hollywood movie. We thought - this is perfect since ultimately, video gaming is digital storytelling with a new medium. We are a language arts crew of students studying how stories are crafted, so we'll look at writing a story in a new light.
Immediately following Mr. Lew's presentation, we Skyped with Mark Van Langeveld of Utah University. Mr. Van Langeveld has created professional games and now teaches video game design to college students. He was wonderful in getting our ideas rolling with gaming possibilities and helping us look at Twain's work with a new perspective.
Phase 4 - Be Creative and Develop Our Digital StoriesIt was time to go to work, but we needed to start with getting our ideas down on paper. For two or three class periods we simply brainstormed - idea after idea to determine what would make a great game. We promised to stay true to Twain's novel and create challenging yet entertaining experiences for our soon be game testers. Through this process, we sketched ideas on large paper, held class meetings and presentations to pitch our ideas to one another, and determined how we could ultimately provide a digital tour of the novel.
Google Drive and Edmodo were integral to the success of this phase. Each team created a shared folder inside of Google Drive. Every sketch, brainstormed note, photograph and more were shared in this folder letting every team member access files even if one was absent.
Phase 5 - Learn the Software
Another couple of wonderful collaborators from Arts Partners were Mrs. Stacey Scholfield and Mrs. Skylar Lovelace. These two wonderful ladies prepared us with tutorials on how to create both maze and platform games in Game Maker Lite - a free gaming software found at yoyogames.com. Stacey spent a couple of days showing us the ropes of the software so we could go back to our projects and expand them further.
Additionally, we needed a software that would help us create sprites (the animated characters in the game). We could have used the Adobe Creative Suite, but it's quite costly and we needed an entry level tool for our purposes. Mrs. Smoke found Inkscape, which is an open source software that works very similarly to Adobe Illustrator and has wonderful get started tutorials.
Phase 6 - Collaborate with High School Partner Class in Portland, Oregon
We had the fortunate opportunity to partner with Mr. Maves' class in Portland. These students are taking our hand drawn main characters and converting them into digital art. Through Skype calls and digital sharing, these high school students are truly taking our sketches and bringing them to life.
Phase 7 - Feel the Beat
Without a doubt, this was one phase we really enjoyed exploring. Another wonderful expert. Mr. Richard Crowson brought his banjo and guitar into class to provide a history lesson of pre-Civil War music, and even improvised some tunes we could use in our games. It was an awesome day to spend with "Banjo Man"!
In addition to Mr. Crowson's expertise, we have been using our own iPhones and iPads with the Garageband App to become our own Foley Artists. From making tracks of footsteps to rolling marbles to dripping water, we have been working hard to get just the perfect sound for our games.
Phase 8 - Program, Program, Program
Now that we have our ideas solid, sprites drawn, and sounds made, we are currently in the programming phase. More to come in this area.