If you have a month or more to dedicate to this, try video game design:
Students will need foundational programming skills, which can be obtained by doing coding exercises at codeacademy.com or alice.org. Then, students can use GameStar Mechanic (tutorials available online) to create 2-D games. You might also try Scratch, but I find it a bit difficult to work with. My favorite one is Unity 3-D, but it does take time to learn. I'd recommend the Virtual Training Company course to help you through designing a first-person shooter. The positive part about actually designing a game is that students have a finished product, and they've learned technical skills. The downside is that it takes time to create games that work, it isn't easy. This is hard fun. Students must be dedicated and persistent, motivated by the medium.
If you have less than a month:
As worthwhile and engaging as game design is, it isn't always doable to spend time teaching kids programming skills in a content area class. So, forgo technical design, and instead thinking about smaller projects you can do. If your heart is set on design, have the students create a design document where they describe what they'd like the game to do. There are templates available at Game Pitch Template, UNC Game Design Template, and Sloperama. Keep in mind, the length will be up to you. Professional documents are usually 100 pages or so, but you don't have to hold your students to doing that level of detail. That would be terrifying! I like the example given by Tufts An Ants Life Project, it is an eleven page document but it was put together by a team of students. This is essentially a technical paper, so this could be an introduction into technical writing.
Design isn't the only entre into gaming and school. Try serious games that support the English classroom. Think about using Third World Farmer and Ayiti to engage students in issues of poverty. Perhaps using it in conjunction with an article like Africa Hunger Facts and a chapter from Lurlene McDaniel's Angel of Hope would be a good idea in 9th or 10th grade. This could also begin a discussion about what students think about when they think of Africa, to show them that the continent of Africa is much more than impoverished black tribes. It also includes Egypt, Morroco, South Africa. It includes modern cities, not just the bush.
There are many games out there than can be used as part of a unit. Check out this wiki to find more ideas Gaming in the Classroom.
The above games are PC-based, but if you have access to consoles, pick up some entertainment games that students actually play and use their trailers as writing prompts.
Uncharted 2- This video game is an action packed, beautifully crafted game that functions very much like a movie. They have paid special attention to crafting a story worth telling. What I like about this one is that it makes a connection to Marco Polo. Perhaps pair a short story or article with it about the Age of Discovery.
Writing prompts from this short trailer could include asking students to pretend they are in one of the scenes shown in the trailer and describe it using five senses. For example, in the first few seconds, we see the main character collapsed into a heap of snow, bleeding. What caused him to be that way? What is he thinking? How does the snow feel underneath him? There are two cuss words in the below trailer, so you may want to consider using TubeChop or some other service to isolate a scene you want to highlight or cut out undesirable parts.
Portal 2 offers options including an advertisement for boots, turrets, and panels. Personally, my favorite is the boots one, and I think adolescents would love a prompt where they were asked to design the ultimate pair of shoes (or other clothing). They could draw it and then write a description. You could even take it a step further and ask them to write an advertisement for their shoe.
Of course, there are also videos from games scholars. I particularly like the Smithsonian's Art of Video Games Exhibit collection. Using the video below, you could parallel the writing process to the design process for games. A potential prompt might be to ask students how important story is to a game. Is it necessary? Is it not? Why or why not?
The opportunities for playing video games are vast and wide. I'm going to plan on making more posts that give more ideas as I come up with them. Feel free to share your ideas too!
References
Gee, J. P. (2003). What video games have to teach us about learning and literacy. Computers in Entertainment (CIE), 1(1), 20-20.
Prensky, M. (2001). Digital natives, digital immigrants part 1. On the horizon, 9(5), 1-6.
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