It's been awhile let's catch up.

It has been awhile since my last blog post/podcast. To say it has been a busy year is an understatement .

via GIPHY

I am sure you can relate to have to navigate COVID protocols, integrating students back into what it means to be a student as well as be around others. Then you have constantly shifting protocols, mandates, etc. Yet on top of all of that we had to teach as well not to mention the curve balls that were or still are being thrown at us. Well it is spring break in my district and I am taking time to not only rest but to catch up. I have missed doing my semi-regular blog/podcast posting so for this one I will catch you up on what is going on in my/with my classes.

When last we talked I shared a little at home project I did with my kids regarding their shoe decoration business & how I was looking forward to applying what I learned from my own kids to my classroom.

So it has been a semester and a half and I can say I have been having fun with doing more project based learning in my class. What I chose to do was have my classes work on some old school game design. By old school game design I mean board or card games. One thing we were encouraged to do was manage our kids screen time now that were were back in person. Well in an engineering/technology class that is hard to do since most of what we do is use computers to design. So I asked my resident experts (my own middle school aged kids) what they thought of my idea to have my classes create a board or card game using our classroom tech. They thought it could work with a few tweaks. So that is the path I took/am taking my classes down this year (and quite possibly into the future). 

The goal is to run my class sort of like a small business where I have "employees" whom I need to train to do the work that is needed to create our old school game. My rational for choosing old school game design was that I wanted to give kids the experience of playing games in a social way that helped them reconnect with friends and family. One thing I quickly learned when students came back in person was they had little to no practice being social amongst their peers and elders. They needed to know how to handle being around other kids who were not in their immediate family. I wanted to give an opportunity to engage with their peers in a way that was fun and organized; hence the design a game they could play. My design an old school game idea gave me the opportunity to not only get them off the screens but also empower them to interact with their friends/peers in a positive way. Since they designed the game they would have to explain it as well as problem solve around issues that came up during play. It also allows for conversation in a structured way on various topics such as how did you create this, where did you get the idea, how do you play, etc. I will say the journey has been interesting and I am still tweaking things as I go along.

To start I teach kids the basics of file management and the engineering/design process. Then I go into project manager mode and tell them as employees they need some training to do their jobs & that it is my job to make sure they are trained. We jump into learning how to make templates for posters using MS publisher. Then we go into 2d design both mono-color and multicolor designs for stickers and cartoon graphics using sketch.io. Finally we end off with a brief foray into 3d design  using tinkercad. Once they have a basic skills we go into doing some research by playing various board, card, and dice games. While playing they need to find collect information on:

1. The theme/genre of the game

2. What is the objective

3. Is it a turn or rounds based game

4. How many players are needed (minimum & maximum)

5. Rating of how hard the game is

6. Rating of how fun/engaging the game is

7. What type of game it is

8. What elements of gaming does it include

Once our research is done we do some simple data analysis to decided what type of game we can design that will appeal to a middle school (10 to 13 year old) audience. After selecting our game type & theme we split into production teams and we start working on making the various things needed for our game such as:

• cards
• board
• rules
• box
• pieces
• dice
• tokens
• etc.

After everything is created we go into play testing mode to work out the kinks and once that is done we go into production.

So far we have come close with 2 out of my 4 engineering classes making a complete game. Unfortunately the semester came to an end before they could get me all the production parts. However it was a good life lesson about the importance of deadlines and what happens if you miss them. Hopefully this semester with the few tweaks in training and play testing as well as group management we will make our production goals.

I welcome your questions, thoughts, & suggestions. 

As always "Go Forth & Do Great Things!"