I have been talking about this game for quite a while both online and off line. It was the first game that I bought for my iPad some six month ago. It is a traditional 'Physics' type game with a really user friendly interface. The aim of the game is to get the marble or other object to hit the red button using the simple laws of gravity. Here is an example  (level 5):

 As you can see, the red button is located at a height. When the marble is released, it fals from the port hole (top left) and drops down to the ground level where it pops off the ramp. Though it gains a little bit of height it is no where near the height of the red button. Therefore, the player must use some objects. The objects available in each level vary and can be seen at the top left of the screen. In this case, there are three long blocks. The player must arrange these blocks so that when the marble falls, it hits the objects which in turn hit the red button. Have a look at the next screen shot below:

 Here you can see the blocks arranged. When the marble drops hopefully it will hit the blocks and as they collapse, they in turn will hit the red button. See next screen shot:

As you can see, the marble has hit the blocks and causing them to tumble and hit the red button meaning:

Each level varies in the number of objects, number of marbles and number of obsticles that must be passed in trying to hit the red button. It requires thought, skill and precision. I found this game particularly addictive but wasn't sure why. This brings me back to thinking about last weeks reading. As Malone (1980) mentions edit in his paper-

What Makes Things Fun to Learn? Heuristics for Designing Instructional Computer Games

• "In order for a computer game to be challenging it must provide a goal whose attainment is uncertain
• In a sense, the very notion of “game” implies that there is an “object of the game”
• Uncertain outcome- A game is usually boring if the player is either certain to win or certain to loose.

Four ways to make the game uncertain:

1. Variable difficulty level

2. Multiple level goals (score keeping and speeded responses)

3. Hidden information

4. Randomness"

Thomas Malone (1980)

- All of which are prominant features of Gravity HD.

When I was teaching, my subject was Biology and Science. If I think about the Science curriculum (specifically Physics) I think that Gravity HD could be used to illustrate/enhnance  learning in a number of ways. If we look at Scotland's Curriculum for Excellence: Science Experiences and Outcomes, we can see how a digital game such as Gravity HD may be used:

• "Through everyday experiences and play with a variety of toys and other objects I can recognise simple types of forces and describe their desired effect.
  
• By investigating forces on toys and other objects I can predict the effect on shape or motion of those objects"

As part of the Digital Games Based Learning course we have been asked to write a review of a game. I am considering using Gravity HD. I was  thinking about producing a small video clip of the game rather than use endless screenshots. Though I am still in the very early stages of my planning, I would welcome any thoughts from any teachers out there

:-)

Notes from Week 3 Readings

Both Malone papers provide excellent basic theories of Games Based Learning. Although written some thirty years ago, the principles remain the same for digital games today. This post is a summary of the mainpoints.

What Makes Things Fun to Learn? Heuristics for Designing Instructional Computer Games

Thomas Malone (1980)

• In order for a computer game to be challenging it must provide a goal whose attainment is uncertain
• In a sense, the very notion of “game” implies that there is an “object of the game”
• Uncertain outcome- A game is usually boring if the player is either certain to win or certain to loose.

Four ways to make the game uncertain:

1. Variable difficulty level

2. Multiple level goals (score keeping and speeded responses)

3. Hidden information

4. Randomness

• Extrinsic fantasies depend on whether or not the skill is used correctly (see diagram below)
• Intrinsic fantasies- not only does that fantasy depend on the skill, but the skill also depends on the fantasy(see diagram below)

Heuristics for Designing Enjoyable User Interfaces: Lessons from Computer Games

Thomas Malone (1981) 

This paper largely focusses on what makes computer games fun (intrinsic motivation) and the sysems behind the game.

• Game- Darts: diesigned to teach elementary students about fractions
• 8 differnet versions of the game to find out which features made the game enjoyable.

• Boys liked the fantasy of arrows popping ballons and girls appeared to dislike this fantasy
• Fantasies can be important in creating intrinsically motivating enviroments
• Implications for designing enjoyable user interface- the appeal of computer systems based on three categories: challenge, fantasy and curiosity (see below)

I thought I would use a post to list a few quotes from this week’s readings. Hopefully they will be useful when I come to writing the synoptic paper :-)

Greenfield (1984) This paper is somewhat dated. However it summarises the early research of video games. Many of it’s findings are still relevant today:

• “Video games have been dubbed the marriage between television and computers”
  
• “Popular arcade games involve tremendous amount of visual action, and is may be one source of their appeal”
  
•  “Video Games are the first medium to combine dynamism with active participatory role for the child”
•  “Another concern about video games is that they are merely sensorimotor games of eye-hand coordination and that they are therefore mindless”
•  “The motivating features of video games are beginning to be put to more explicit educational use” 

Kane (2005) A General Theory of Play. Considers all the dimensions of play.

Caillois (2001) Classification of Games

Newman (2004) What is a video game?

• “Elements of the video game table 2.1: Graphics, Sound, Interface, Gameplay and Story”
  
•  “What a video game is not: a bunch of cool features, a lot of fancy Graphics, a series of challenging puzzles, an intriguing setting and story” (Rollings and Morris, 2000)
• Why do players play? “Rouse (2000) identifies a range of player motivations and expectations. Among them, three are particularly notable: Challenge, immersion and players expect to do, not to watch”.
  
•  “Video games may be understood as a form of ‘embodiment experience”

Photo Credit: tjmwatson (under CC)

As mentioned in my last post, as a child, I was a huge fan of the Commodore 64. About four years ago, I decided to purchase an old C64 on eBay and relive my youth (not sure what happened to my original?). The C64 was released in August 1982. It was the best selling model of the 1980’s. It had a huge 64KB of RAM and a graphics chip with 16 colours! It really was state of the art. My parent’s bought a C64, in 1986, with the intention of using it to manage farm accounts. This was not to be so. It took my Father 4 hours to program the machine to play ‘Ba Ba Black Sheep’, let alone, create, calculate, manage and save any accounts. With so many failed attempts he gave up and passed the machine onto my brother and I. I don’t actually know anyone who used the C64 for anything other than gaming. This is where my passion for all things ICT initially began. I would spend hours working out how to programme the C64 to do very simple (and at the time, fascinating tasks) I managed to play small monophonic tunes, draw very basic pictures and of course there was the game playing. I find it incredible to think that 20 years later I am now able to do the same tasks and much more from my mobile phone! With regards to gaming I was an avid user. With 16 colours the C64 games were just fantastic! ‘Hungary Horace’, ‘Dizzy’, ‘Wheelies’ and ‘Road Blasters’ to name a few (others not the most PC in this day and age). It gives me a very nostalgic, yet strange, feeling when I set up this piece of computing history. Seeing the famous blue C64 screen, holding the ‘Run/Stop’ and 'shift' buttons simultaneously, waiting in anticipation for the game to load; will it load or willit come up with ‘system error’?

C64 Interface

 Hungry Horace Screeshot: Level 1

Photo credits: tjmwatson (under CC)

When I bought the computer some four years ago, I asked for my purchase to be delivered to the school where I was teaching. I couldn’t resist setting it up and letting my pupils see my new toy. At the time, my Intermediate 1 Biology class were working on the subject of ‘Alcohol and Its Effects’. Under the umbrella of this subtopic is ‘Reaction Time’. What better a way to demonstrate reaction time than with a good old 10 minute game of ‘Crazy Cars’ (This is a game where you have to race around a circuit avoiding other cars and potential hazards, ideal for testing reaction time!). After overcoming the basic graphics (one boy asking me, ‘but where is the car?’) the pupils surprisingly got really into the game. They were also very inquisitive as to how the machine worked (i.e. loading of cassettes and the general setup). You can now play many of the C64 games on the iPhone ,however nothing beats the real thing ;-)

The Commodore 64, such a fabulous computer of the past, they have even commissioned a classical orchestra to play the music from the games!

 Pac-Man Screenshot (iPad) Photo Credit: tjmwatson (under CC)

Pac Man was a game that I was first introduced to as a child in the late 1980s. I can't remember which computer I played the game on, but Amstrad springs to mind. The Pac-Man movements are controlled by the game player. The object of Pac-Man is to eat as many Pac-dots as you can without getting eaten by the different colored ghosts that roam around the pac maze. If you eat a large Pac-dot it will turn all the ghosts blue. When the ghosts are blue, you (Pac-Man) can in turn eat them. Fruit also appears at random points in the maze. If you eat these fruits you will gain more points.

For the purpose of the course, I downloaded Pac-Man "lite" (the free version) for my iPad.

I think this is a great little game for testing reaction time and small scale problem solving. However in terms of learning, I am not sure exactly what the player *is* learning? I guess there is a certain amount of physical finger coordination to be learned and perhaps the Thinking Correctly Under Pressure (TCUP) theory, but how could this be applied in another context? Perhaps when playing sport and choosing your tactics?

As Greenfield (1984) states video games are "merely sensory motor games of hand-eye coordination"; quite a sweeping statement but applicable in the context of Pac-Man and many of the basic games of the era. Other similar games of the 1980s that spring to mind Hungry Horrace (the first computer game I owned for the Commodore 64) and the Dizzy Game series (more in another post)

How things have changed with touch-screen technology and augmented reality just some of the things that I am looking forward to investigating further during this course :-)

Photo Credit: tjmwatson (Under CC)

Hello fellow students and tutors!

I thought I would use my first post to (re) introduce myself. Sorry if you have already read my introduction on the discussion board!

The Games Based Learning module is my fourth course. I am also studying the Research Methods course this semester. After these modules I am hoping to go on to the dissertation. I was a teacher of Biology and Science for 7 years. For the last three years I have worked in project management (ICT classroom based initiatives and VLEs). My current role is elearning community facilitator for the Scottish Traveller Education Programme (STEP). My current project is called eLearning and Traveller Education Scotland (eLATES) I am supporting, coordinating and managing the deployment of Glow (the Scottish Schools Digital Network and VLE) for mobile and Travelling Children. I would class myself as a *casual* gamer. As a child I was a huge fan of the Commodore 64 computer. More recently I was involved in a number of games based learning trials in the Primary Classroom (2008). These included the use of Sony PSPs as tools for learning and also using Desktop PC software such as Media Stage and CrazyTalk.

I am looking forward to exploring the potential that digital games have to enhance learning experiences for all ages and sharing practice, knowledge and experiences with others on the course :-)

More information about my online life can be found on my website: www.tessawatson.com

Please feel free to leave me and comments or questions (positive or negative!)... They are what makes blogging so worth while :-)

I made some minor changes to the mind map. Assessment is now fully two-way, it wasn't before. And I have added Twitter and PBwiki to the technologies list.

Some short remarks:

• Like I said, I think I could not have drawn the map this way at the beginning of the course. No idea, what kind of map I would have drawn then.
• The bottom part of the map is heavily influenced by the community of inquiry model.
• I could have added more relations, but tried to concentrate on the most important ones.
• Technologies are relatively isolated, they are really the least interesting part, I think.
• The way library / resources are integrated is consistent with my thinking since about 10 years.
• I have added two web 2.0 principles, re-use of data, and co-design. Co-design is also responsible for the only crossing line in the map, but students cross a teachers' line, which is in its own way rather funny.
• Design and activities stand heavily out as important nodes. These will be interesting candidates for mind maps of their own.
• O yeah, students are the most busy node in the map, also kind of interesting.
   

I'd like to offer three things as final thoughts regarding the IDEL10 course.

• First is a word cloud IDEL10 Wordle BW.pdf (you might want to save this and open in a pdf viewer that has the ability to rotate the view). It was created based on the over 20,000 words I wrote in 26 posts in this blog over the past three months. The cloud was generated by http://www.wordle.net. Students, Discussion and Learning seem to be the most frequently used words. Yep, students sure discussed learning. 
• Second is a mindmap elearning mindmap.pdf centering on e-learning created in Google Docs. It's different from what I would have drawn three months ago. The technologies mentioned are the ones we encountered, although I can see now that I have omitted Twitter, even though I tweeted on a regular basis with the hashtag #mscel. And of course there are many other technologies out there.
• Third, I looked at the course learning outcomes as described in the IDEL10 Course Guide, page 5.

1. "Critically evaluate a range of technologies in terms of their impact on teaching and learning." Although the use of most technologies throughout the IDEL10 course was on a rather basic level, there are lots of critical remarks regarding technologies and technology use in my blog.
2. "Begin to design your own online learning resources." Although the word design is frequently used in my blog (look at the word cloud, it's wedged in the second N of learning) there were not many activities regarding design in the course itself. I think I learned most about design by critically looking at the setup of the IDEL10 course, and the way this design was employed by the different team members.
3. "Contextualise your own practice in terms of the key issues emerging from current research in e-learning." Wherever possible, I brought in anecdotes from my own experience, although want might say that these anecdotes were used as much to contextualise the readings, as the other way around.

Finally. I know I have been a "difficult and demanding student" like I wrote in my last blog post. I do hope though that some of my criticism of the IDEL10 course will make it into the team's evaluation. Should this lead to more specific questions you'd like to ask me, please contact me.

Thanks to all of you, and in particular to Clara (you're in the word cloud as well, upper left corner, right above the word 'also', that can't be a coincidence ;-) for bearing with me.