Magazine Covers With Your Photo


Ever wanted to be on the cover of your own magazine?  Check out Faceonthecover.com.  It is a free tool that allows users to upload a photo, then create a magazine cover from it.  70 different templates allow the user to personalize the magazine.  Unfortunately, the text is pre-loaded, and cannot be edited.  However, it might be fun for the kids to make their own magazines and choose one of the headlines to write a story about.  On this one, for example, I would prompt the kids to imagine what life would be like without computers.

Unity Game Design Reflection

This semester I opted for a crazy class: Authoring Video Games.  Considering I had little prior knowledge in programming, I was more than a little concerned about my ability to fulfill the requirements of the class, but I just had to try.  I’ve been reading tons of research about the capabilities of video games, and some people I’ve talked to have even been pushing the idea of having students learn by designing video games.  Kevin Hodgson of Western MassachusettsWriting Project has had some success with helping students learn with a 2-D tool called Gamestar Mechanic, and my fellow National Writing Project TCs have heard of it.  After reading his ideas, we wanted to try it at North Star of Texas Writing Project. 

 After going through the tutorials for Gamestar Mechanic independently and playing with the free version, I was flummoxed by the many buttons and features of the tool.  I admit, I gave up after only three hours of attempting learning the system.  My frustration was perhaps unfounded.  Game design is a difficult process.  

Sometimes teachers don’t have to be the experts.  So, I tried letting a few of my students attempt to make a video game on Gamestar Mechanic while the majority of my classes worked on paper-based board or card games.  Honestly, I was hoping I’d have a superstar that could teach me the system that I was unable to master on my own.  Those few students were excited, and tried their best to complete a game.  None of them was able to accomplish this in the two weeks I was able to give them, as intimidated by the program as I was.  They were able to show me up on their sprite creation, with creative choices in color and design.  Sprites in Gamestar Mechanic are the avatars and characters that are imported into the world.  Since my goal wasn’t really just avatar creation, but instead the completion of a game, I decided not to try it again this year.  But, I still hadn’t given up on game design.

North Star of Texas Writing Project has been discussing the possibility of offering a game camp for the past few years.  What this camp will look like means different things to different people.  Some want students to work toward the goal of completing a video game.  I’ve always been somewhat skeptical about this approach, but when supporters refer to Hodgson’s success, I can’t argue.  Yet, without an expert in how to run the tool, I don’t see it as a viable path.  Since I’m most interested in games, I thought I’d try to be that expert.   For a time, we discussed alternate reality gaming, but that didn’t end up being completed.  I think this was largely because people didn’t have realistic expectations about what we could do or clear shared goals about what we should do.  Still, I like the idea of putting the kids into a design space, to allow them to be creative.  I thought perhaps we could get a grant to allow two people at our site access to the training course, while also getting software for laptops we could take from school to school.  Alas, the grant wasn’t funded.  

But then I saw the game design course.  I was familiar with Greg Jones, the professor, and knew that he was knowledgeable about 3-D game design and serious games.  Most of the reading I had done was about entertainment games, not serious games.  This was a new part of the field I needed to investigate. I knew Jones came from a Computer Science background.  If anyone could get me through programming, I was certain it would be him.  

The tool Dr. Jones chose is Unity 3-D, a highly powerful system that operates on a combination of point and click technology and Javascript programming.  He had us follow the modules from the Virtual Training Company course Introduction to Game DevelopmentUsing Unity 3-D.  We were also instructed to practice JavaScript through CodeAcademy.  This course included 75 short videos that were on average 5 minutes in length where the tutor would describe actions in the game system, helping the new user learn how to make a first person shooter game.  The first assignment took me hours.  For whatever reason, I couldn’t seem to get things to work the way the video showed them.  It took me some time to figure out I was substituting commas where semicolons went, or I was capitalizing something that shouldn’t be capitalized.  Typos and syntax errors result in the program refusing to work.  I was frustrated when I couldn’t get it to work, but diligent.  I refused to give up.  When I finally figured it out, I was proud of my work.  Every module after that first one got easier and easier.  Still, it took me many sessions to learn the system, and even now I don’t consider myself an expert game designer.  I would need more lessons in coding to be able to claim that.  

Our final project was to make our own game that showed elements that we had learned through the tutorial.  I opted to leave out the turret and grenades because I want to bring my game to the school as a model for future use.  Schools generally don’t look favorably on weaponry. I had to go back and review most of the videos in order to complete my game. However, this time, I was able to fast-forward through modules that I mostly remembered, looking for what I specifically needed.  I understood what I needed to do; I just had to remember the way to do it.  Making the final project game took me a little more than the time it took me to finish the first module during the first few weeks.  I was so excited. 

Then my computer went black.  

The black screen of death, that sucks all hope out of the heart of a graduate student who DIDN’T SAVE the work.  I was devastated.  Yet, this was a challenge I could handle.  After getting the computer back up and running, I redid the project, built it, and posted it.  Then, I tried to double-check my post by playing my game in the web browser.  It wouldn’t work!  The computer said I had to reinstall the Unity Web Player.  After reinstalling and then attempting to play again, it still didn’t work.  I did that at least twenty times and gave up.  I tried playing my game on a desktop computer at the school.  Admittedly, that desktop is older than my home laptop and it is subject to firewalls that I don’t have at home.  Still, I couldn’t access my game there.  But, my game exists on my laptop and it is playable within Unity.  My solution?  I took screenshots of every room and sent that to my professor.  Ok, so it isn’t the best case scenario.  I’ll possibly end up with my first B during PhD work.  But, my game is something I’m proud of.  And I’m proud of myself for taking on this challenge that is so outside my comfort zone.    

Here’s what I’ve learned this semester: game design is hard.  I knew on an academic level that this was true, but I hadn’t experienced it.  It takes creativity, years of learning software, and dedication to be a great game programmer.  I have tons of creativity, but I am not knowledgeable in software or hardware, nor am I very good at programming.  I can see a great game in my mind, but have no way to execute it.  Maybe one day a game design studio will hear me speak about the possibility of what games can be, and maybe one day I’ll be a game designer who can hand my ideas to a programmer and see it enacted.  That would be an opportunity I’d love.  Being able to have entertainment games that also have curriculum-friendly aspects to them is an area that needs to be developed, a sort of hybrid between entertainment and serious games. But, until that day, I’m a teacher and game scholar who has just gotten schooled on what it means to be a programmer.  

You see, programming is not the same as writing essays.  It is more like writing math equations than academic writing.  Yet, like writing, there are clear grammar rules that need to be followed.  Like writing, programming requires creativity.  Unlike writing, programming is about trying to get the creative idea to fit into commands the computer can follow.  This means that it must necessarily follow rules.  Any writer knows that rules are made to be broken.  This doesn’t work in programming.  The programmer has to be extremely detail oriented and be able to break down every action into the smallest parts in order to make the program work.  I admire those people who are able to do this. 

Think of it like the difference between those who are great bakers and those who are good cooks.  Bakers have to follow a specific formula to be able to come out with something amazing.  They must use exactly the right measurements, but there are still plenty of opportunities for creativity.  On the other hand, a cook doesn’t follow rules.  Many good cooks can’t share their recipes because they don’t operate on a recipe.  Instead, they adjust seasonings and mix ingredients together with little care about preserving the exact formula.  They can come up with some great masterpieces while breaking rules. Both the baker and the cook are creative, and both produce delicious food, but they do it differently. 

The next step is to try to bring what I've learned into the classroom.  I no longer believe that learning to program a game can be done well in a one week camp.  Instead, it will require at least a semester.  So, I’m petitioning my school to allow me to teach a game design course next year.  The best way to learn is to teach.  I’ve got enough experience now that I know how to use the system.  I’m looking forward to seeing what else I can learn on it, and what my students can do. 

RTI for Adolescents- Part IV (CD2M Introduction)

Last week, I attended High Impact Reading Interventions for Secondary Students with Deborah K. Reed at the ESC Region XI center.  She closed out the session by discussing a strategy that I'm extremely familiar with, because we use it at my school in all English classes.  So, instead of using her language to describe it, I'll use the conventions and coding I'm used to.  Here's an image of the poster I have hanging on my wall to remind the kids of the parts of this strategy:

We use the term CD2M with the kids to indicate that this is the strategy we are using.  This stands for Connect Device to Meaning.  It highlights the parts of the text that help the reader with comprehending what the author is trying to convey.  At the beginning of the year, we explain to students why it is important to be able to analyze text in this way.  We tell them that once they start to recognize the parts of the sentence, and the moves that the author makes to build their argument, it will help them to understand meaning.  There is also the writing benefit, that when students understand the mechanics of a successful piece of writing, they are more likely to be able to mimic that style or use those strategeis in their own writing.  It is important to note that students need to understand that with any strategy, once they learn how to do it, they must decide if it is helpful to their ability to answer questions before spending time on it during a test.  If they are overwhelmed by the strategy, don't use it.  If it  helps, then pull it out of their toolbox. 

This is a multi-step strategy, one that needs time to teach.  It would be a bad idea to hand students a text and a worksheet with all these parts, for example, and tell them to annotate the text.  Instead, the teacher should model each individual part and then build to where they can do all parts of the strategy independently on one piece. 

B? and L? is used to indicate student questions on the text.  What do they not understand?  What does it make them think about?  When they mark the paper with a B or an L, it is a signal to them to go back and think about the text.  It is also a signal to the English teacher that these parts might need to be focused on as a whole class. 

In Texas, students are asked to write open-ended responses (OERs) on their state assessment.  We spend a good amount of time trying to get students to where they can answer these questions by using text support and explaining their answer.  Questions are meant to be expanded on, and the best answers include key evidence from the text.  I usually tell students their answers should be 3-5 sentences for OER.  The best way to answer can be described in a number of different formulas, but the easiest one I can provide is:  1) Turn the question into a statement to indicate the answer, 2) Provide a detail from the text to prove why that answer is correct, 3) Explain how that detail supports the answer.  We also sometimes ask for a more complicated answer which would be: 1) Background, 2) Answer, 3) Detail, 4) Explanation, 5) Concluding Statement.  Either model can work for writing an effective OER. I've also used the Jane Schaeffer Writing technique to teach kids to answer OER's.  Use whichever one works best for the kids that are in the class that year. 

I'll continue my explanation of the CD2M strategy with a focus on diction in Part V.

RTI for Adolescents- Part 3

In this section, I will discuss the text complexity activity from Deborah Reed's High Impact Reading workshop at the Region XI center. 

We were given four versions of a text, and asked to order the versions from easiest to most difficult.  Then, we discussed the rankings with tablemates. 

 

Reed explained that both readability and cohesion are important factors in text complexity.  Above, she provided this heuristic to model the fact that selection A was high in both readability
 and cohesion, and B was low in both.  Readability is complexity of sentences and word choice where cohesion is the relationship between ideas, cause-effect relationships.  Both of these things matter in determining text complexity.

She described a study she did where students were given texts that were varying levels as above paired with comprehension questions.  Those students who received the easier text were more likely to get comprehension questions right.  Students with the harder text were more likely to get comprehension questions wrong.  However, the difference between the two middle selections was negligible.

In part IV, I will discuss the strategy "Attention to Syntax."

RTI for Adolescents- Part 2

Continuing my summary and reflection of Dr. Deborah Reed's High Impact Reading for Adolescents workshop at the ESC XI center, this post will explain the first strategy that was discussed.  First, it is important to understand that most students would say that a difficult part of comprehension is big words.  Students sometimes seize up when they see big words.  But the thing about big words in the English language is that they are often comprised of word parts or are part of word families.

Reed mentioned the strategy of teaching word parts briefly, prefixes, suffixes, and roots.  This is one of the stock lessons that I always keep in place.  I show students words that are clearly able to be broken up into parts.  For example, the word sociologist has the root socio (Latin for friend) and the suffix -ologist (Greek for speaking, is used for the study of). We discuss how many words are comprised this way.  I will pick out a few for us to go over together, but I don't ask them to memorize a list of them.  That won't work.  It is about the strategy of recognizing that words use the same word parts, so that they can break down an unfamiliar word and relate it to a familiar word.

In order to put a room full of English teachers into a situation where we felt like a student feels when decoding words, she showed us the Russian word институт.  I don't know Russian, so when I looked at this word, I tried to sound it out.  I had no idea how the first symbol is pronounced, so I though something like ic tin tut.  If I related that to a word that I know in English, it isn't a huge stretch to come up with the word institute.  In this case, this was the correct guess.  Students should be able to think in this way.  What does it sound like?  What does it look like?  Can I make a reasonable guess?  

Another problem for students is that they can sound out the words and "read" them, but they don't always know the meaning.  One way to break down meaning is to look for patterns.  What words are repeated?  Are they parts of they same word family?  Can meaning be inferred by knowledge of any of the derivations?  For example, sociologist could be paired with social, sociology, society, etc.  If the student knows any of the words, they can look for relationships.  They also would know that this word is important to know. 

The British National Corpus has lists of words that are within a word family.  She showed us http://www.lextutor.ca/ where you can retrieve these lists.  It is also possible to cut and paste a text into the  document and this online tool will identify words in word families and highlight it in different colors, as shown below.

Wordle can also be used to look for text frequency, but it does not show words that are related like the lextutor tool does.


In discussing this strategy, Reed made a good point about the difference between content literacy and the reading test.  In English class, we teach students to write with variety.  The same word should not be repeated over and over.  But, in science class, there might not be a similar word.  She explained that mass, for example, cannot be equated with weight.  Where weight would change with different gravitational pulls, mass would never change.  In a science text on mass, then, we would expect the word would be repeated.  Other informational text would function the same way.

Names are another stumbling block.  Students shouldn't stress out over names.  Emile, for example, might be read as Emily instead of Ee-meal, and it would not change the meaning of the overall text.  When I read Harry Potter, I had no clue how to pronounce Hermione.  I read it as Her mee oh nuh. Instead, it is Her my uh nee.  I was off, but it didn't get in the way of my understanding of the text. 

In summary, students need to know how to attend to words.  First, they should recognize and connect word families.  Second, they should look for words that are repeated.  Third, they should know how to deal with proper nouns.

Stay tuned for RTI for Adolescents Part III for a discussion of text difficulty.

RTI for Adolescents- Part 1

Today, I attended the "High Impact Reading Interventions for Secondary Students" workshop at the ESC XI center which was led by Dr. Deborah K. Reed.  Reed is a former Texan, who has been transplanted to Florida, returning here to share RTI strategies with secondary teachers.  RTI is an acronym for Response to Intervention, a term usually used to indicate what strategies the teacher takes to help students that need extra support.  RTI is the actions we take to support struggling readers.

Students who struggle with reading can't be fixed in a single day.  Indeed, even an entire year is really not enough to completely transform adolescents that have been accustomed to not getting it.  But, we can aim to have the reasonable goal of helping them to a) first stabilize their performance relative to peers, and b) then move on to improving relative to peers.  Reed suggests that this is usually best done over two years minimum.

Beginning our session, Reed explained that it is a good idea to "know your enemy".  What this means is the teacher should know how test-makers construct the tests.  First, she discussed the concept of passage dependency.  Passage dependency is the desired effect where students must read the passage in order to answer the questions.  The student should not be able to answer the questions without reading, if they could, then the question would be considered passage independent.  Reading comprehension tests are not memory tests like most high school content areas use for assessment.  This is a skill-based test, where background knowledge is not necessary to succeed.  Instead, reading comprehension tests are looking to see if students understand the process of reading.  These exams require multiple readings, using strategies, and actively trying to be "close readers".

Another thing that is different about Texas reading tests, is that the newest assessment, the EOC, is a timed test.  In some ways, this goes against the idea of how to be an effective reader because strategies slow the students down so they are more closely reading the text.  We don't want students to just go through the motions of reading, where they do little more than word call.  Students need to get better about using their time wisely, to slowly attend to the text but to be able to do it in a way that doesn't waste time either.  It is a balance situation.  The ideal would be that the reader, text, and environment should be working together to get to a close reading.

We talked about four different types of questions, taken from Raphael & Au:

• Right there- in the text

• Think and Search- putting different parts of the passage together

• Author and Me- using text evidence to support a conclusion

• On My Own- using own background knowledge

There will be mostly Think and Search and Author and Me questions at a high school level, with very few Right There questions and On My Own being almost non-existent.  Therefore, students need to understand strategies for Think and Search and Author and Me questions.  She does not suggest that students should be required to identify the different types of questions, but she does say that teachers should be aware of what the test is comprised of.  However, some of the teachers that were in the room and discussing the strategy of identifying question types thought that it might be a good activity.  Personally, I would not suggest asking students to identify the question types.  I would provide them the questions and then I would discuss the questions and types with them as a part of a lesson on how to identify which strategies to use.

I will continue this discussion in the next post, RTI for Adolescents- Part Two.

How Can I Use Video Games In My English Classroom?

I love this question, and I get it all the time.  There is research supporting the idea that video games function as great learning tools (Gee, 2003; Prensky, 2001).  But teachers don't necessarily want the research.  Teachers want practical answers. 

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.