Occasional thoughts and ideas about the place and purpose of technologies in learning and in particular just how the world of computer games can add value to that.
If you 're uncertain about whether to splash out on a PS3 then stop the uncertainty now for Little Big Planet is coming. Made by the creative minds at Media Molecule this sandbox/game creation world will allow you to play,create and share. It looks fantastic and is I'm sure something that will not only be a huge hit at home but can also be put to excellent use in schools.
The general idea is that you can make your own games that other people can play. But the tools and options for the game creationlook limitless, only bound by your imagination or lack of it. You can even use the eyetoy to take snapshots that can then be used a textures in the game. Have a look:
Here is another video with someone talking through the game design procedure
I remember the battle between VHS and Betamax in the 1980s. My dad plumped for a cracking Sanyo Betamax model because it was reputed to be the best system and I've still got some heavy metal Betamax videos such as Stryper in Japan in the cupboard somewhere! The Blu-Ray vs HD DVD battle never reached the Hearns vs Hagler heights of the 1980s video recorder battle but it really is all becoming irrelevant these days...my video recorder hasn't been used for months. It's not broken, I've got money to buy tapes and yes I do know how to programme it. It's just that it is redundant technology...
From hard drive recorders from Sky and Virgin, watch again facilities on TV servies and now BBC's iplayer, you've no excuse to miss your favourite programmes.
I used to have a diary that had a number of Escher's paintings in it. Not real ones obviously! Well there's a game coming out that Much of the work that I have been doing in schools has revolved around the Nintendo DS and Wii. There has been quite a number of projects that have used the PS2 but so far little or no work with the PS3. Initially I was not hugely interested in the PS3 mainly because the earlier tranche of titles seemed to be aimed at the more hard core gaming world and as such they didn't easily lend themselves to the work that I do in retro-fitting commercial off the shelf games into the Scottish curriculum. However it looks as though things are starting to change. Take a look at Echochrome for the PS3 which is coming soon to the Playstation Store. You might want to think about Escher's art as you look at this and think how this game could allow you to cross over into the cognitive challenge domain.
The above trailer explains the laws of Echochrome and this clip shows how the game plays out. Here's a clip of the 'laws' in action:
....and here's another:
This looks rather tasty and appears to me to be yet another game that can be used to facilitate that cognitive challenge that we are finding is so hungry in young learners via the commercial games consoles.
Out of all the consoles that I have the one that I have found myself using the least is the PS3. This might appear to be surprising to some of you considering the reputation of this beast as THE next generation console but in terms of what I do there are/were very little in the way of games that I could use in terms of teaching and learning in schools for it. However, I think things are going to change…
I have just received Eye of Judgement for the PS3. This game comes with the next generation EyeToy but this time it is called EyeCamera. The technology in this is quite something and I must say that I have become very excited about my *S3 for really the first time since it arrived. In essence Eye of Judgement is a trading card game, almost like Pokemon or Top Trumps except these cards come to life. Yes, that’s right, they come to life. If you remember the scene from Star Wars where they play chess with holographic characters then you are getting close to the Eye of Judgement. Have a look at it:
It’s been quite difficult to get in to a first but now I am getting g to grips with it I am beginning to see ways in which this could be used in some learning contexts. More of this to come...
What has excited me even more about the PS3 was the discovery of a whole new range of EyeCamera games for the PS3 that can be bought and downloaded from the Sony Online store.
Mesmerise Did anyone ever buy you that desktop toy that is made of lots of round-edged metal spikes that when you placed your hand on it the spikes moved to create a relief image of your hand? Well this is what Mesmerise does and more. There are lots of environments that the user interacts with and manipulates by movement and sound. I found myself completely transfixed by and relaxed in this environment.
Tori Emaki If you have played Okami then you’ll appreciate the beautiful graphics in this game. It’s very much in the style of the Japanese artists such Hokusai who painted the Great Wave of Kanagawa. It’s really beautiful and enchanting. The idea of the game is that you control the flight path of a flock of crows as they glide through this wonderful Japanese environment. Discover where the different gods are in order to change the colour of the screens. I found myself spontaneously reciting haiku as I played this…
Consolarium Games based learning ideas Come in and ponder
What class eh? Anyway, have a look at the game:
Operation Creature Feature It seems as though the Logical Journey of the Zoombinis have been a major influence in the design of this game. This game introduces you to the Blurbs, cute little lovable creatures whose cosy world is invaded by a dark cloud. Your task is to guide the Blurbs through a series of increasingly difficult puzzles in order to, no doubt, reach the new land where there are no dark clouds. This was hugely entertaining, fun and tiring, my shoulders were knackered at the end of it. Have a look:
Aqua Vita This game is soothing interactive art experience that turns your Whiteboard or TV into a virtual aquarium. Before long you’ll find that you have lost yourself in a peaceful underwater haven. In fact, as I write this blogpost I’m watching a lion fish floating in the water across the way from me….how relaxed am I?!
The game encourages you to interact with it by allowing you to run your hands over the water’s surface and watch the ripples catch the light. Dabble your fingers into the tank and fish food will sprinkle down to the hungry marine life within.
Have a look:
The Trials of Topoq If you have played Kororinpa for thew Wii then you’ll have an understanding of how this works. This game sees your image mapped onto the surfaces of Topoq's soaring towers - every movement you make altering them and sending your ball hurtling in a new direction. Can you use your body to control its descent and see it safely to the end of 30 courses? You'll be racing against time, avoiding gargoyles and smashing through cages - while the mysterious towers themselves do their best to stop you...
Now that’s the stuff Sony, engaging mini-games that I can retro-fit into particular contexts within schools. This machine has real potential and I’m sure that there will be more to come from it in the months ahead.
Great news last week at the Consolarium in LTS in Dundee when we welcomed a bouncing and very heavy Playstation 3 into the fold. Here's the cute little thing itself with a welcoming and warm couple of LTS employees (Jenni & James) making it feel wanted.
Isn't that sweet. We are about to explore this beast now in terms of what it offers schools. (Apparently we can install Windows on it!) Games are good at the moment but a little hard to sell to schools in terms of obvious educational contexts at present although no doubt there will be some killer games to follow...
I appreciate that there may be a bit of a Guitar Hero fixation going on with me at the minute but I just have to share this with you. I was out and about today meeting some of my Local Authority partners who are working with some games based pilots for me and I called in to visit the team at Stirling Council. They have invested in some games consoles and have them set up in their ICT Training suite very much in a similar way to how we have done it at the Consolarium (West Lothian have done this too). Anyway it appears that one of the team has been secretly honing her fret fingered skills on Guitar Hero during the holidays. Here she is...Margaret 'Slash' Cassidy!!!
Now. even better news was that she wanted to play Strutter by Kiss or Surrender by Cheap Trick! Two of my favourites! I've seen Kiss hundreds of times and Cheap Trick once and their song in Guitar Hero II is one of my all time clasic tracks (so evocative of the late 1970s).
She was excellent at it. We played ther co-operative face off and as you can see player 1 won. The Master strikes! I have played quite a lot of people from the educational world at this game and I don't think anyone has beaten Margaret's score. Scottish Education's Suzi Quatro it seems eh?! Now if we have a Guitar Hero set up at any future educational events beware of this lady she is a ringer at this game.
On a slightly more serious note we are about to start a Guitar Hero project up in Aberdeenshire. The game itself is to be used as the focus for a collaborative story making project focus very much in the style of Mr Togs the Tailor. The plans that the teacher has drafted to use in relation to the game look really interesting and it looks as though this game can may very well have a locus in schools. What a relief! Great fun and a sound educational rationale, what more could we ask for?
The DfES Games Summit today at the Royal Garden Hotel proved to be a very interesting and thought provoking session. There were some short presentations from Caspian Learning, Dave Whyley from Wolverhampton LA and Relentless Software. The last presentation by Relentless had me really excited…
The games for the PS2 are in my opinion just superb. I’ve talked about Guitar Hero, Dance Mats and Eye Toy quite a lot in this blog but there’s a new kid in town and it’s called Buzz and it really is incredible. It’s based on quiz formats that are commonly seen on a range of TV shows and it comes with four controllers that hook up to the PS2. There is a range of games available for Buzz: a music quiz, a general knowledge quiz and a game called Jungle Party (which we have at the Consolarium and more will be blogged about this soon). But today we learned about Buzz: The Schools’ Quiz that has been commissioned and will be due for release mid-2007.
We saw a short video of it in action at Terra Nova Primary School and it was a sight to behold. The kids in that class had been put in teams and they were answering questions that had been covered in a recent Environmental Studies project. They engagement was there to be seen. Unfortunately the presentation had to be cut short but it was clear from the video how the dynamic nature of group involvement within the context of Buzz engaged, excited and challenged the children. We need to get our hands on this and see how much we really know about rivers, weather systems and transportation! Maybe the kids would beat us in this context.
Naturally the commission for this product was aimed at the English curriculum so it would be really good if we could make representation to Relentless to ask them about creating a Scottish version. My initial observation of the game was that it would not allow you to edit content hence the need to possibly tweak it to suit our particular needs.
This appears to be a really innovative product and I look forward to getting my hands on it.
Going to the Game City Conference in Nottingham this week. There is a nice summary of the events from the Edge site. I look forward to blogging about this.
It's amazing the people you meet in the education business and particularly at conferences. I was sitting blogging in one of the breakout rooms at Handheld Learning 06 yesterday when I got chatting to this guy, Renaldo Lawrence.
We got talking about Flash and and I told him that I liked to dabble in it and that I had taught undergraduate teaching students how to begin using it. We had a look at my Game for Going Native article on the LTS website and then he showed me his Flash stuff from his website www.rllearning.com.
It turned out that Renaldo was from South Carolina in the USA but that he made his life over in England and was a teacher at St John the Baptist school in Woking.
It seems that Renaldo is very keen to get in to the Flash training market and his site is rather cool in terms of how he has nicely packaged together a range of learning materials within the Flash interface. What really appealed to me though was the fact that he has packaged up a number of his learning materials so that they can be downloaded in mp4 format to the Sony PSP. This seemed to have been quite a common thread in this conference. The ability that games devices such as the PSP and the DS have as storage devices or as web browsers.
This helps when promoting consoles in education because the more than just gaming argument can be pushed. But hey, what is there more than gaming?!;)
This morning I went to the Intuitive Media presentation about Superclubs. This proved to be very interesting as it was beginning to focus on how the Superclub community was being made available not only on traditional PC/laptop interfaces but also to mobile devices.
What really got me interested was the short input form James Blomfield (above) from Capel-Le-Ferne Primary School in Folkestone. His school is using a number of handheld devices to facioiatet access th Superclubs for the pupils. Devices discused included the Nintendo DS lite and the PSP. Again here is an example of how these games devices can be used for more than Trauma Centre or The Sims2.
Wirless connectivity for the PSP is built in but you need to buy the Opera browser for the DS.
Recent Comments