Karen Johnson

School

 * STEM Magnet School Adams Twelve Five Star Schools
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How will I introduce Scalable Game Design in my school?
I plan to introduce game design with my sixth grade students. I will be teaching two classes with 27 students in each class. I plan to use game design within my math and science content. I also would like to use more extensive game design that I learned with my MESA students in an after school program.

Project Journal
Summer Institute, June 1-11, 2010

Reflection 1, June 1, 2010

WOW!! I really can create my own Frogger game. I really feel that I understand what we did during the creation of this game. The staff support was wonderful and used an inquiry based approach to helping me understand how what I wanted to do with the agent, matched the actions. They were not telling me which action to use, but let me struggle and figure it out on my own. What a terrific model we had- this will certainly help me when I implement this in my classroom. I found that I was a bit stressed when making our own agents- my artistic abilities are terrible. When I got home, I figured out how to import my own images and now I feel better about my game.

Reflection 2, June 2, 2010

Today, I drove to campus thinking of how I can implement these games into my science classroom, while teaching some content at the same time. I came up with a few ideas: Use the frogger game to create a game in which frogger needs to dodge tornadoes, hurricanes, heavy rain, winds.... Create a volcano in which different flows (pyroclastic, lava and lahars) erupt and frogger needs to make his way across the path of the various flows safely.

I was glad to use the tutorial for the Space Invaders game today. I am still confused about some of the commands we were using, especially when moving aliens. It was good for me to use the tutorial and read about the actions/behaviors. It's easier for me to see things and process them as I go.

Reflection 3, June 3, 2010

Today, was a nice addition to the other days- we learned how to make a SIMS game and I am feeling pretty successful. I like how we started together as a group and walked through the steps for the first "donut". I feel pretty comfortable with adding a bed, tv and even dogs to my game. It is working great! Yahoo.

Reflection 4, June 4, 2010

As I end the last day of Week One, I still can't believe how much I learned about creating games in such a short time. The "language" is becoming easier for me and I don't need to rely as heavily on the tutorials. I spent this morning fixing up some items on my space invaders game: adding sound, creating shields that can get hit 4 times and look differently each time, and I even made a counter to keep track of aliens kills and mother ship kill.

This afternoon, I decided to create a new version of space invaders that I called Weather Invaders. I used 2 mothership (clouds) that each controlled rain droplets of different types. The rain drops send lightening and tornadoes to the ground surface where a weather destroyer can shoot at them and destroy them before they hit the ground. I need to add in some shields such as houses, caves, .... to protect me from the weather and then it will be completed. Yahoo- I feel pretty good about my accomplishments today.

Reflection 5, June 8, 2010

Today was an exciting day of Pacman. I am feeling much more comfortable with using AgentSheets as we worked through the process. I want to remember to create a powerpoint for my students to work through as we are implementing. It was very effective for me to see what I was needing to do, along with doing it. I also like how Sandra modeled diffusion with students. This will be important for me to remember as well. This will make for a good bridge between the science and the computer work. I also want to keep in mind to go step by step with students at the beginning.

One area I struggled with was when we told the ghosts to chase pacman- I didn't see in the tutorial that you needed to delete the commands we had earlier. I will need to add this in to the tutorial. After completing the work for today, my pacman was not erasing when eaten by ghosts like it had before. It was helpful to view the triggers as they were happening to problem solve the exact location of the issue. I need to remember this source is available for me as well. Overall, I really enjoyed creating pacman today- although my version is difficult for me to win:))

Reflection, June 9, 2010 Today we had some differentiated opportunities which I enjoyed. I liked having a smaller group and short segments of time to do some different things. Our trip to the Discovery School was a great example of real students in action with creating pacman. When I was there, Fred was just staring the diffusion model and students really understood the concept- I'm sure it helped that they had background in diffusion and actually used that term. they also had background in averaging. I want to keep this in mind as I proceed with my students. We also participated in a debugging session, which was valuable for me. These examples were things that happened to me last week when I was learning and it was a good reminder that I want to keep handy when I implement with students. I am concerned that I will forget some of these ideas through the summer. I also had some time to work on pacman- although I had difficulty with creating a timer with digits. I'll try working on it at home when I can use my own computer.

I enjoyed learning and seeing the ant simulation and can see how on a small level, I can implement scientific data collection using this model. It was a little much for me today though and I'm feeling like my head is in overload with information. I'm looking forward to playing with the other simulations that relate to my science content such as avalanche and the forest fire.

Reflection June 10, 2010

I felt the morning session was beneficial- it was helpful to see the different simulations that have been created for me to use. Right now, I'm looking at the Avalanche, which really ties to my volcano unit with lava flow, lahars and pyroclastic flow. I am also looking at the forest fire and the heat diffusion with the house. These are very applicable to my science curriculum. I also enjoyed creating the lesson plan with my group. It was helpful to hear how tech teachers implement the aspects of the project and helped me to think critically about how this might look in my classroom.

First Unit

Day/Week 1 Reflection, DATE

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Day/Week 2 Reflection, DATE

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End Of Unit Reflection &amp; Possible Changes, DATE 

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Lesson Plans
This is an example from Sandy Rea's page that linked lesson plans in documents.

Here's a website with my Frogger Tutorial, which also references and links to the Frogger Tutorial on the Scalable Game Design Wiki: http://schools.bvsd.org/aspencreek2/computer/Frogger/index.html


 * [[Media:Frogger_intro.ppt|SlideShow Intro into AgentSheets &amp; Frogger ]]
 * [[Media:Frogger_Lesson_Plan_Outline_sandy_rea.doc|Lesson Plan Outline for Frogger (in progress)]]
 * [[Media:Frogger_Lesson_Plan_Day_1_sandy_rea.doc|Lesson Plans for Frogger Day 1 (in progress)]]
 * [[Media:Frogger_Lesson_Plan_Day_2_sandy_rea.doc|Lesson Plans for Frogger Day 2 (in progress)]]
 * [[Media:Frogger_Lesson_Plan_Day_3_sandy_rea.doc|Lesson Plans for Frogger Day 3 (in progress)]]
 * [[Media:Frogger_Lesson_Plan_Day_4_sandy_rea.doc|Lesson Plans for Frogger Day 4 (in progress)]]
 * [[Media:Frogger_Lesson_Plan_Day_5_sandy_rea.doc|Lesson Plans for Frogger Day 5 (in progress)]]
 * [[Media:UploadingGameToArcade.doc|Step-by-step guide for preparing and uploading game to Arcade]]

Contact Information

 * [mailto:karen.johnson@adams12.org Email]