Site Launch: Video Game Design for the Classroom

Video Game Design Screenshot
For the past few weeks, I have been sharing out pieces of a resource around video game design as my sixth grade students have created science-based video games. I often brought along my video camera for the ride, interviewing my fellow teachers and some of my students, and capturing some of the events as they unfolded with the project. I thought I might produce a video. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense to keep much of the segments separate, and a website resource really seemed to be the way to go.

So, here it is.

I’ve created this website called Video Game Design as a way to document our learning adventure around game design, science and writing in hopes that you might also consider the possibilities of video games in your classroom. It was quite an interesting project, which continues to unfold even now (some of my students will be revising their games for the National STEM Video Game Challenge). I’ve tried to show how the project touches on a lot of curricular areas, and connects with the Common Core initiative. And I have attempted to show how engaged my students were in their creation of a video game project.

Most of all, I want to emphasize that my young gamers moved from the “players” of other people’s games to the “creators” of their own projects, with a real audience (we used Gamestar Mechanic, which I highly recommend for this kind of project) and a real purpose. While there are areas I see in reflection that could have been done better, there is no doubt in my mind that this project transformed learning practice for a few weeks. It’s been a bit difficult to get back to the regular curriculum, to be honest.

I hope the site is useful for you. Feel free to pass it around and if you see things that need to be addressed or have some general comments, I would love for you to give some feedback here.

Peace (in the sharing),
Kevin

 

5 Comments
  1. This site is unbelievable! So packed with great learning. And it is a great model for me in thinking about how to make some of the learning visible that is happening with digital writing/creation. So appreciate this. Brilliant!

  2. Hi Kevin!

    Great website! I’ve never been here before! (I’m ashamed to admit it!) I am anxious to explore more. I am researching educational blogging and was so pleased to find your blog featured on Edublogs. so fabulous! Keep up the good work!

    Andrea Nichols

    • That looks great (I don’t read Polish so I can only go by looks alone). Also, I think my students were playing your students’ Christmas game the other day. Interesting connections …

  3. Pingback: 219 – You, Others, The Word, Online

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