Week+Five


 * =**Date**= || =**Reading/Video Assignments**= || =**Activities/Explanatory Notes about Activities:**= || =**Due Dates**= ||
 * Week Five

Sept. 19th || Compentencies for the New Age Instructional Designer Good Video Games and Good Learning

[|Programming in Alice] This freely available chapter from the Alice Handbook will give you practice in making a simple game, and advice on how to create your storyboard, in addition to the built-in tutorial, in the Alice gaming software.


 * Make sure** you check out the[| Alice gallery] too--there are many more 3D objects there, ready-made for your use. || # Finish your Google Doc project draft, at least for the moment. Choose a feedback partner and provide feedback for each other. This needs to be done by next week.
 * 1) Create your Alice storyboard using the Google Docs presentation tool. You should have a draft nearly complete by Oct.10th.

Remember to keep it simple--your purpose here is to discover the potential of Alice and learn some basic programming.

You do not need to become an expert! Your game does not need to be of commercial grade either--this is a testing time for you, as an educator and designer of learning experiences with technology integration.

Make sure you think about your game as a simple creation that highlights one important concept for your real or imagined learners. Then we will assess the games, not for their quality of play, but for their quality of learning. Paper and pencil are fine for many skills-based tasks, and adding a game would simply be "piling on" so to speak. Think about what your learners need, and in combination with what you now know about Alice gaming software, what would help them the most? A game that you design for them, or a game that you help them create themselves?

Think about these things:
 * 1) What is the learning goal? To teach a skill or a concept, or maybe both?
 * 2) What can Alice do to help you achieve your learning goals that cannot be more easily done with older technologies? (make sure you explore the Alice Gallery for insights--some of the games are good, but many are just simple procedural teaching (especially in math and science). Don't limit your imagination to K12 only--these are examples that could be scaled up or revised to suit adult learners in many contexts.
 * 3) What insights do you gain from rethinking your technology integration approach? (You are welcome to start a discussion thread about this, if you like so that you can share experiences and share expertise).

What light does the process of game creation shed on your technology integration plans for this course? What if you had learners create the games as a form of assessment that would reveal their depth of knowledge about a particular concept or skill? || Sept.26th,to the extent possible ||

Here are some examples of high end games made with Alice--you do not need to go this far, unless it becomes your class project, or course. I just wanted to let you see some examples outside of the Alice Gallery. Focus on what students learned by making these games--computational thinking--you have to have math skills to do this, and great writing ability to create a story, and a really good grasp of content.

This one is really long--8 minutes! It is intended to be a game, and if you had it on your Alice software, you could play it. media type="youtube" key="GYV2paMEfc0" height="315" width="420" align="center"

This one shows a great deal of computational thinking and really good storyboarding. media type="youtube" key="FFq3TQ4xquA" height="315" width="420" This one is really cute, and most definitely a student creation! media type="youtube" key="In00RelwHQ4" height="315" width="420" I hope these examples help you see the potential of Alice for teaching and learning. You can make the games, or your students can make the games--whatever serves the learning goals the best. Do not forget to look at the Alice Gallery and examples of teacher-made games on the Alice website.