Meet the Designers

Every classroom should provide opportunities for students to pursue their passions and interests. So far this year, we've seen students write and illustrate children's books, compose original music, create podcasts, explore drawing and sketching, and try their hand at game design. Not all of these pursuits resonate with every single student, but every student has found something outside of the regular curriculum that has held their interest for a significant period of time. When students have free time, they can usually be observed returning to their interest and exploring it in greater depth.

In this video, Jerry and Henry talk about some games they have designed and the games they hope to work on in the future. Game design is a complex effort that involves visual aesthetics, story creation, character development, and an understanding of the variables that govern play. It's obviously an area of intense interest for them that will hopefully lead to a pursuit of subjects such as math and physics that are necessary to understand game design on a higher level. They're off to a good start.

Some other students are pursuing games that involve math concepts that they are studying. Hailey is working on a game in which the main character is pursued by a variety of fractions. If the fraction is in simplest form, it won't hurt you, but if it needs simplifying, watch out...

Designing Games

Friday afternoons in Mr. Mitchell's are usually reserved for student-centered projects that will engage the students in higher-order thinking skills and reinforce collaboration and peer tutoring among the students. This Friday was no exception. The topic was game design. On its face, game design may seem like play. But as you will see in the video, it involves planning, experimentation, revision, collaboration, and testing as well as design aesthetics such as art, sound, and movement. It's a type of visual storytelling that requires considerable thought and ingenuity.

The students are using a free iPad app called My Doodle Game for the first time. App users are given a wide range of control over the visual layout, characters, and actions. It struck me as the students were constructing their first games how much their facility with the iPad helped them in the process. Their imaginations immediately took over, and they helped each other figure out how to perform necessary actions. I did not observe a single student ask Mr. Mitchell for help. Their only requests to him were that he try their game and make suggestions for better play.

Initially, I thought this might have greater appeal to the boys in the class, but that was clearly not the case. I did notice that the boys tended to be more absorbed in actions and game play while the girls generally were more concerned with the visual presentation and storyline. The fact that Mr. Mitchell's students share iPads--most commonly in boy/girl teams--contributed to the large degree of synergy that you'll see in the video. Everyone contributed and everyone learned from each other--and had a good time doing so.

Now that the students are familiar with the principles of game design and with My Doodle Game, they will be able to concentrate on planning more complex story lines and game play. One goal is to have the students create scenarios and storyboards for the next game(s) that they design.

One quick note--the students did finish their Oceans and Division Keynote projects before starting on game design. Those are subjects for another video.

Word Games at Lunch

One of the fascinating things about observing Mr. Mitchell's class is the extent to which students use their time productively. This is even true at lunch, where most of the students choose from a variety of word games to play alone, cooperatively, or even against each other over bluetooth or wi-fi. It's significant that all of the word games in this video were located and suggested by students.

In this short video, you'll see students playing Word Abacus, Worcle, and Word Warp X. The latter two are particularly interesting because you can touch words from the word lists to find their definitions and usages--something that the students often do, particularly when they create a word by trying plausible combinations of letters.

Word Warp is interesting because you can challenge other players in real time. In the video, Karli and Monique are challenging Mr. Mitchell.

The other fascinating thing I observed is the extent to which the students interact with each other in the process, and the extent to which the conversations that they have revolve around words, spellings, and meanings. Who said learning can't be fun?