By now you should have your first draft of the story and probably
selected the curriculum standards to address your game. Your game
should be designed to introduce content or to provide practice for
student understanding. If your game is designed around basic
factual recall -- think of another game!
After sharing your story and game ideas, we will go through the
project description and begin to download the template. Most of
the technical skills you need to create the game were acquired
when you created the seating chart. Using the drawing toolbar in
PowerPoint will allow you to customize your game template.
Action buttons are easier than they seem. Being slow and
methodical makes it easier to create action buttons.
Here are the tutorials for the action buttons:
Creating Headquarters to Access Your Questions Slides
Creating Question Slides
After demonstrating how to make action buttons, let's talk about
your game board. There are two ways to make the game board.
One is to use your hand, the other is to use computer to draw the
game board. If you choose to use your hand, you will need to scan
your game board. The instruction will give it to you next week. If
you want to draw the game board with computer, you can draw it
in PowerPoint (one letter size) or your can draw it in Firework (as
large as you want). This is your option to learn to use Firework to
draw the board.
There are two parts of your game that ensure students will want
to use it for learning: the story and the level of questions. You
want to make sure that you have an engaging story - and you also
want to make sure that your game is the right level of challenge.
Factual level questions are too easy (and boring) regardless of the
grade level you are targeting. We'll spend time in class on Thursday
working on your game design and learning how to write good
questions.
For Next Tuesday:
1. Begin customizing the game template
2. Begin creating the game board
2. Write your game directions
3. Finish the basic slides: objectives, game pieces, copyright
notice, credits, etc.
4. Write 3 questions to use in your game (on scratch paper)
and bring to class.
