Ballarat Grammar eLearning

"Sporty Maths" is a Year 8 Elective where students explore maths concepts centred around the theme of sport.

While celebrating St Valentine's Day at our school on February 14th, the class had a "We Love Technology" session

where the Xbox Kinect was used and students played the "Kinect Sports" game.

Students took turns to participate in the track and field events.

Times and distances were recorded and shared on an Excel Spreadsheet, then the data was analysed.

Many thanks to the Year 8 students for participating so enthusiastically and to their teacher,

Mr B, for his assistance in organising the session.

One of our current displays features items related to Minecraft including books about rocks and minerals as well as some real gemstones.  Students have also assisted to create the display with some Minecraft Papercraft blocks.  I've also purchased some goodies from one of my favourite online stores, ThinkGeek, including a Minecraft Foam Pickaxe and Minecraft Magnets.

Although we don't have our own Minecraft server, students are encouraged (and very keen) to share the items they have created via their individual accounts.  When you speak to students and ask them why they enjoy using Minecraft, their answers are always similar, "I like Minecraft because I love to create things."

Everyday, I am greeted with an exciting new creation from one of our Miners!  Recently, one of our students, Corey, created his own TRON Minecraft avatar using Microsoft Paint.  By examining the Paint file of another Minecraft avatar, Corey modified it then uploaded the new file to use as his own avatar.  (Screen shot to come!)

In our previous post, we explained how we have been testing Stephen Howell's amazing Kinect2Scratch program.  In this movie, one of our students tests the Kinect2Scratch Music game followed by Space Invaders.

In our original test of the Space Invaders game, we were unable to get the shooting action working by raising our arms.  However, after a quick tweet to Stephen Howell, he very kindly published some additions that we were able to add to Scratch in order to get the full functionality.  He also very kindly added a new game, Kinect2Scratch Music, for us to test.  As I set up my computer for the students to test this game, even I had no idea what awaited us!  It was great to share in the excitement with the students!

We have spent the past week testing Stephen Howell's amazing software, Kinect2Scratch.  Wow! This is such an exciting development in games creation and, in particular, the use of the Kinect Sensor Camera with one of our favourite free software programs, Scratch.

We have previously used Scratch 4 OpenSim as part of our Virtual Worlds Project and are huge fans of the Scratch software.  Not only has Stephen created Kinect2Scratch but he has also shared a number of games that can be easily modified by altering the Scratch Blocks and their settings.

Our movie shows some students testing the Ball Bounce and Skeleton games.  By installing the regular Scratch program, some additional Kinect software and connecting the Kinect Sensor Camera directly to a PC, we suddenly have an exciting way to not only play games but for learners to easily create their own Kinect games. 

As part of our Inside the Game theme this term, we are encouraging students to share games that they have created.  One of our Year 7 students, Daniel, was interviewed recently about a game he has created using the Warcraft Editor.

Students have had the opporunity to play Daniel's multiplayer game (that is yet to be officially named) and I was both fascintated and amazed to see the intricate programming involved in his project.

Congratulations Daniel and thanks so much for sharing your exciting work with us!

We started by making two versions of a very simple game called, Rock Chase.  The object of the game was to use the cycle to run over the rocks to score points.  If the wisps flying through the sky hit your cycle, you lost points.

The day before our Year 8's were going on their camp to Lake Eildon, we decided to alter the Rock Chase game by adding Lake Eildon words to each of the rocks.  Therefore, players had to run over the rocks with the Lake Eildon words to score points.  As we played each of the games, the scores were recorded and students enjoyed trying to beat their "personal best" or their peer's highest score.

The object of these activities was to generate interest in games creation and in the use of the Kodu Game Lab software.  It is a free download, has excellent tutorials available to get you started, allows users to create simple games yet there is the potential to create much more involved games using the advanced features.  

It was great to see students asking questions about the software and the Windows Controller. Kodu Game Lab allows you to easily share your games creations with others to play and edit. We shared our Rock Chase with one of our students, Andrew, who made his own improvements and then shared it with us :)

Visit the sites below to learn more about Kodu Game Lab and obtain the free download:
http://www.kodugamelab.com/
http://planetkodu.com/
http://fuse.microsoft.com/page/kodu.aspx

You can also download our basic Rock Chase game and try creating your own version :)

This week, I was fortunate enough to visit Meredith Primary School where Year 6 teacher, Ben Gallagher, is running a program he has called the Digital Sandpit.

As the name suggests, it is a "sandpit" approach to the use of technology, giving students a variety of experiences with digital devices.

Students are organised into groups and, each day when they arrive at school, have different activities to participate in.  Some activities are quite structured (eg: Mathletics on a laptop computer or Brain Training on a Nintendo DSi) whilst others are less structured.

Activities are centred around the use of a variety of devices such as gaming consoles (eg: Kinect Sensor Camera with the Xbox and the Nintendo Wii), hand held devices (eg: the Nintendo DSi and the iPod touch) and mobile devices (eg: the iPad and laptop computer).

What struck me immediately was how happy and enthusiastic the students were as they started their school day.  It was evident that the first 20 minutes spent on these activities really set the positive tone for the rest of the day.  Ben explained how the introduction of the program was having a positive influence across the curriculum, with the Digital Sandpit activities being used as a basis for Literacy and Numeracy.  The program has been extended to the Year 5 class and there are hopes to extend it to other year levels, depending on funding.

Meredith Primary School is also very close to completing an impressive refurbishment and I was fortunate enough to be taken on a tour by their principal.  The learning spaces are open, flexible and inviting with beautiful decking areas leading to the playground.

As I left the school, I was surprised to see that I had only been there for an hour as I had got so much out of the short visit!

Ben was a presenter at this year's ICTEV Conference and you can click here to view his presentation, The Digital Sandpit, exploring and learning through technology.

Special thanks to Ben for being so welcoming and the friendly staff and students at Meredith Primary School.

So far, our Virtual Worlds Project Team have been exploring "The Architecture of Games" and Kodu Game Lab has been enthusiastically received with students playing and editing Xbox style games with the use of a Windows Controller.

Stay tuned!  There's more to come!

Special thanks to:
The students from Northern Beaches Christian School for their "Minecraft Pixel Art" image
Tara, for her OpenSim creations and
Stephen Howell for sharing his Kinect2Scratch software 

This is an amazing infographic from the Online Colleges website.  It covers five areas:

1. Skills video games develop
2. Educational games
3. Facts and statistics
4. How video games are used at school and
5. Other skills video games can help you hone

Click here to view the infographic on the Online Colleges website.
Special thanks to Cathie Howe from the fabulous MacICT team at Macquarie University in New South Wales. 

Via: Online Colleges Guide

In 2011 we have continued to explore a number of exciting areas such as games creation using Kodu Game Lab, Scratch and use of the Microsoft Kinect Sensor Camera with these tools.  We have also had lots of fun creating our own special BeeBot, "Phee-Bee" who has been programmed to complete some exciting journeys around our Senior Library this year!

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