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 :-)

 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)

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!

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”