On Wednesday I embarked upon the NWN adventure with my S1 class. I am a 'Second Generation' teacher, having not attended the course at Heriot Watt University but been trained and mentored by the 'Games Masters' in my department who did attend.
Excitement was in the air and with only two problems - one machine suddenly switching itself off and another not having the DVD inserted at the start - they were all eagerly exploring their new world.
My first objective was just to let the students play about with the game, to get a good understanding of the program. This went quite well, with some students working together and others working alone.
The class were so involved in the task, we almost missed the bell!
So far - so good...
Mrs K
Thursday, 28 January 2010
Wednesday, 27 January 2010
Progress to date, adventure author from S6 to S1
This is the first week that we have used NWN2 with our S1 pupils. Although only two of us attended the training sessions with Judy and Cathrin all the teachers in our department are going to be teaching the software to all our S1 classes.
On an extremely positive note ALL my class came armed with their permission slips signed ready to start!
As an introduction we let them play the Village Adventure module to familiarise themselves. None of my class knew of the game so this was a useful exercise before starting to look at the Adventure Author toolkit. On the whole, aside from the odd machine crashing and some pupils being unsure of what to do with the game then becoming frustrated it, it seems to worked. I am looking forward to next week to see what they will do when they are let loose to create their own worlds!
Although we are only just beginning the Adventure Author project with all our S1 classes, I have been using my S6 Digital Gaming Class as guinea pigs for the project since December. From a teaching point this has been great as I have had the chance to try things out and learn from mistakes along the way so I am more confident about the whole thing. From pupil point there has been mixed results. Some of the pupils are keeping me on my toes and asking how to do things that have me stuck - "How do I create a waypoint so I can teleport Miss?" (now I know I asked exactly the same question when I was at Heriot Watt so I will have it written down somewhere!), others are still getting to grips with basics. Having said that most of them have some kind of area complete with conversations and the odd transition. Today we started to do a little scripting which worked well, even the pupils I was dubious about managed to produce some working code. I may use some of the S6 pupils work as demo modules for the S1 to see what it is possible to create. It may also be an idea to have the S6 pupils as classroom helpers during the project - they need a bit of persuasion though.
Sheila
On an extremely positive note ALL my class came armed with their permission slips signed ready to start!
As an introduction we let them play the Village Adventure module to familiarise themselves. None of my class knew of the game so this was a useful exercise before starting to look at the Adventure Author toolkit. On the whole, aside from the odd machine crashing and some pupils being unsure of what to do with the game then becoming frustrated it, it seems to worked. I am looking forward to next week to see what they will do when they are let loose to create their own worlds!
Although we are only just beginning the Adventure Author project with all our S1 classes, I have been using my S6 Digital Gaming Class as guinea pigs for the project since December. From a teaching point this has been great as I have had the chance to try things out and learn from mistakes along the way so I am more confident about the whole thing. From pupil point there has been mixed results. Some of the pupils are keeping me on my toes and asking how to do things that have me stuck - "How do I create a waypoint so I can teleport Miss?" (now I know I asked exactly the same question when I was at Heriot Watt so I will have it written down somewhere!), others are still getting to grips with basics. Having said that most of them have some kind of area complete with conversations and the odd transition. Today we started to do a little scripting which worked well, even the pupils I was dubious about managed to produce some working code. I may use some of the S6 pupils work as demo modules for the S1 to see what it is possible to create. It may also be an idea to have the S6 pupils as classroom helpers during the project - they need a bit of persuasion though.
Sheila
James Young and Heriot Watt University Computer Games Research Project
In September, two members of the Department of Computing Science and ICT at The James Young High School attended a Games Design course at Heriot-Watt University. This 3 day course involved the use of such games as Neverwinter Nights 2 and Adventure Author.Adventure Author is a game-authoring tool designed to support interactive storytelling skills through the use of game technologies. Drawing on traditional role-playing techniques, it moves away from firstperson- shooter game formats, by emphasizing character, plot and narration.
By modifying existing game engine technology, Adventure Author has been developed as a means to guide the young people (10-14 year-olds) through a series of steps, via ‘wizards’, which are aimed at supporting thinking about character and storyline development on a scene-by-scene basis. In addition, an overall map easily allows users to arrange and link scenes to support nonlinear storytelling.
Having authored their own game, the young people can then play this and share it with others. Through this process of play and critical feedback from peers, young people are offered the opportunity to improve their game design and storytelling techniques.
The pupils at James Young together with school staff will be liaising with Heriot-Watt University in a major educational research project during the first half of 2010. Watch this space!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)