Week Sixteen

Game On

Video game design is something we have worked on in the past, but I think this year may have been the most organized rollout of it yet. For our second STEAM collaboration, the STEM teacher and I wanted our students to fuse their art and coding skills by using content from other classes to create games. 

To help get students used to the programs, we did mini workshop days where students had a chance to created animated GIFs on Piskel and code using Scratch. This gave them some base-level ideas of how to create their work and make it move the way they wanted. This year we wanted student games to focus on some of the content covered in other classes, so we asked teachers to come up with three items they cover in class that students then signed up for as the theme for their game. 

Students then used a series of design prompts and storyboarding to help them come up with characters and purpose for their game as it relates to the content they selected. Over the last two weeks, our students worked together to create the games and then shared them and gave each other feedback. In addition to the games, students also created cover art to promote it.

​I am really proud of what students accomplished in such a short period of time. It was fun to see them work through the problem and find so many different solutions. It was inspiring to see students helping each other out and being their own best resource to research and discover solutions. What has best yet was seeing how excited they were to share their products with others and the encouragement that was exchanged as students completed feedback forms.

Click on the images below to view/play some of the games:

This was a great way to complete our time left in the classroom for the calendar year. When we return from break, we will only have about two weeks before switching electives and starting new with a different group. It will be fun to see how these students tackle our last major project and I am excited for what 2018 will bring!