Archive for category video games

Year 9 Wiki

Posted by kmcg2375 in english, school, video games on July 24, 2008

I’ve just finished creating a new wiki, this time for my Year 9 class, and this time it is one that I am actually going to use!

I’ve created two other wikis before – one for my HSC class, which I made using wikispaces.  My Year 12s were struggling with the blog as it was, so the wiki never really got a start there.  The other wiki I made was a general purpose one, which I imagined all of my classes would contribute to, on every subject that they studied.  This way all of my classes, from years 7-12, over time would come to access this kind of mega-source of information.  What a plan!  What a community! But I decided not to run with the idea, because I don’t think the students really will go for the idea…I’m not convinced it’ll be so much fun adding to the site unless you really know the others that are making it too.

I’ve added a couple of YouTube videos on using PB wiki to my vodpod (click here or in the right-hand side bar).  Anyone else out there using a wiki ATM?  What is (not) working for you?

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ACMI games resources

Posted by kmcg2375 in video games on July 22, 2008

Just found this great page of games resources on the ACMI webpage.

I’m going to use information from their pages on games genres as well as an excellent essay by Matthew Sakey on ‘understanding character in videogames‘.  Here is an extract:

The protagonist, however richly conceived, is ultimately a cipher for the player. The less we know about the character we play, the more possible it becomes for us to project our own personality onto them. Developers are reluctant to force a persona onto the player, but they do also want to accomplish their creative goals. The challenge of interactivity lies in encouraging players to take control while still experiencing the story that the game developers want to tell.

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and for Act II…

Posted by kmcg2375 in english, school, video games on June 29, 2008

I’ve been working on a short unit of work to do with my year 9 class next term once I’ve finished with the Video Games unit. I’ve decided that I’m going to run a ‘taster’ course in online tools that can be used to create or publish their work. We’re going to look at blogging, podcasting, uploading to YouTube and sourcing sound and images that can be used under a creative commons license.

I’ve decided to link both units together under the banner of ‘making meaning’ – weeks 1-5 will be based on how video games make meaning, and weeks 6-10 will look at making meaning online.

While students will work in small groups of 3-4 for the video games unit, they will work in pairs for the unit on making meaning online, to author their own blog. I’m going to be fairly prescriptive with what I want each blog to contain. Here are my current thoughts:

Students work in PAIRS to create a blog to publish their own compositions which must include:
• Central blog with a weekly post on class work or homework task, posts must include hyperlinks
• Widgets including at least admin, latest comments, categories and blogroll listing other students blogs, and other links
• A page for published poetry (including an image added for illustration or visual symbolism)
• A page for at least one published short story (embedded as a downloadable document)
• A page for published multimedia (embedded from YouTube)

Looking back over this list I see the requirements could seem a bit arbitrary, but I envisage that each of the required ‘pages’ will be linked to a series of weekly classroom activities/workshops.
Thoughts?

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Video Game Unit with PS2

Posted by kmcg2375 in english, school, video games on June 22, 2008

I have finally gotten around to getting a printed quote from my local games retailer for TWO pre-owned black PS2 consoles.  Now I can get the cheque drawn from school and with the pink PS2 I am also getting next week, finally have enough equipment ready to begin my Video Games Unit with year 9 next term!

I am planning a short, 5 week unit for my Gifted & Talented year 9 class based around video games.  This will be the first time I have taught Video Games in school, and if it is successful it will form the basis of a forum I am running with Darcy at the ETA annual conference.

What I currently have in mind is a series of lessons for the first 3 weeks where students hear a mini lecture and participate in class discussion before breaking out into structured ‘workstation’ activities.  I will probably only give these ‘mini lectures’ one in every two lessons – each time we focus on a new aspect of the unit.  Three weeks will give me 15 x 80 minute lessons, in which I would love to cover:

  • video games as a legitimate ‘text’
  • genre in video games
  • gender issues (gendered avatars, worlds, audiences, marketing etc.)
  • violence in games & classification systems
  • video games and the media
  • games and fan fiction

In the final 2 weeks of the unit I was thinking of getting the students to develop their own games-related research questions.  They would use the 2 weeks mixing independent work on their research question with the composition of a range of set pieces of writing based on the games they had played in class or at home.

So, any ideas for what I can teach?

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