Teaching Game Design to High School Students

Over the past two years I have taught myself how to program, create 3D models and almost everything else needed to produce a game - I've even managed to get my first game Greenlit. Not too bad for a (former) math teacher. It started as something to do to. Something to learn about. It quickly became a hobby and now I dream of it being a career.

Moving Forward

The next great adventure is teaching game design to high school students. And I'm aiming high. There are many tools that allow students quick access to making games, but the quality of games is low. I want kids to be inspired. I want kids to dream. I want their imagination to carry them through the rough and tough spots. I don't want them to be limited by the technology I want their creativity and work ethic to be the only limitations!

Sometimes I wonder if this is selfish. Am I throwing kids into the deep end when they don't know how to swim? I don't want to learn how to use the simpler tools. So I'm not going to learn. If I'm teaching something that I'm not passion about the kids will know it and we all know how that goes... Maybe it's not as selfish as it sometimes feels.

Deep end. Here I come!

Software

I'll be using Unity as a game engine with Blender and Magicavoxel to produce art assets for the games. Unity and Blender have been used to create professional level 2D and 3D games - which is a great selling point for the kids. All the programs are free - making it affordable for just about any school. Even the hardware requirements are pretty low - anything built in the last 4-6 years should work just fine.

All three bits of software work on PC and Mac - which is a huge bonus in a BYOD environment.

My Vision

I see the class as two pieces or two classes inside of the larger class. One is skills and technology based. The other is focused on design and creativity. Both are needed and one with out the other is useless.

I want to front load the basic skills and tools they need. I think much of this will be done in the "flipped classroom style." While I hate the idea of kids watching math videos I think watching a video about how to build a terrain in Unity is different. Building a terrain is a concrete set of skills and steps. Then the creative act of building the terrain can quickly follow. I think we give lip service to this approach in math but in general completely fail to bring in the creative side after teaching concrete skills.

While the kids are learning basic "how-to" skills we're going to spend a lot of class time on the design aspect of games. This is the only part of the class that will have a textbook. I've read a handful of design books and found wonderful fodder for idea generation. Design books also have the added advantage of not getting outdated like computer books...

I want the class to consist of small to medium sized projects that the kids need to complete to learn the skills. I want the kids to be able to tackle those projects as fast as they want. Why be restrained by the pace of others in the class? Once the intro projects are done then the hard part begins: designing and building their own game.

The kids will work in teams of 2-4. While I might suggest roles, I'll let each team figure it out. I imagine kids specializing in art, programming or maybe level design. Who knows?

My role is not to stand in front of the class each day. My role is only facilitate their journey. I see myself helping to organize class design discussions or helping to find solutions to a programming issue or helping to keep the scope of a design to something reasonable.

I want to mentor not dictate.

Pedagogy

This adventure feels a bit like exploring the unknown - as any real adventure often is. I know there are teachers and summer camps using these same tools to teach similar age kids, but there just isn't much published or shared. I'm starting almost from ground zero with my own skills and 10 years of teaching experience to guide me.

I want kids to think about so many things. Its hard to get them all down on paper and and organized. So here's my first attempt...

Google is Your Friend

I want kids to realize that Google is their primary learning tool. Unity has in the neighborhood of 500k monthly users! I have had very few problems that 5-10 minutes of searching hasn't been able to answer. The Unity community is amazing. So many questions asked often have multiple good answers. I want the kids to realize that if the first solution doesn't make sense then they need to look for the next solution - and there very often is more than one solution shared online.  I also want them to be able to determine when the solution is hard and they need to learn more.

If the kids can learn to search for more than just the latest GoT episode then the class might be success with nothing more learned.

What Makes Other Games Fun?

I want the kids to go out and play games. No, their homework won't be to go finish a WOW raid or beat their friends in the latest FPS. I want them to pick a game, be it Candy Crush or Witcher 3, and spend some time thinking about what makes it fun. What is the basic mechanic? What parts could you not take away and still have a fun game? What parts could you take away and have a fun game?

Thinking Outside the Box

Most games fit neatly inside a genre box. Which makes sense some recipes just taste better than others - at least to most people. There are so many box still left unexplored. I want them to spend time thinking about an FPS with no killing. Or RPG with no magic. A strategy game who's core mechanic isn't conquering or destroying opponents - even checkers' core mechanic is destroying an opponent's units. Specifically I'd love to see kids break out of the mold of "war" based games.

I'd love to challenge kids to think about what typifies a genre (not defines it) and remove that element. Where does that take them in terms of design?

I want to propose game design challenges. Maybe as simple as giving a theme in the game jam style and have the kids spend a weekend writing up a design - we won't have time to actually build too many games.

I don't want to do this just to give them busy work, but rather to foster ideas and get them thinking.

What's Next?

The grunt work of planning. I'll be posting my work here and would love feedback or advice.

High School (Video) Game Design

After almost 2 years of learning to program and the (very) basics of game design I have the chance to teach Game Design using Unity and Blender at my school. It doesn't take a genius to realize that the kids would love creating their own games.

So why design games at a high school?

Because game design is creativity in action. Everything that is wrong in (traditional) math education is right in game design.

If you're still with me  then let me explain myself a little more.

I've taught high school math for 10 years. I'm ready for a change and so are the students.

So after yet another year of hearing from the math department about how we need to "tighten up our assessments" or "increase our graduation requirements" I've come to a couple conclusions about math and math education. That being there are two big reasons our students don't do well in math:

1. The content is not developmentally appropriate for all students. 
2. The students simply don't give a shit about the math we are teaching. 

Go talk to a elementary teacher (my wife is one) and ask about how the expectations for a student have changed. Upping the standards doesn't equate to better learning. We confuse an intermediate step (testing) with the final product (people). Training monkeys to pass tests is not education.

To my second conclusion. If the kids care about what they are doing they will work hard. They will engage. I think the success behind Dan Meyer's 3 Act math is not his ability to find problems (although that's pretty good) but that the problems are engaging and the student care about what they're doing! It's not that they're "real world" its that they are interesting. 

[Game Design enter scene right]

I suspect game design might be the hardest class students will take in high school - if they really want a quality product they're going to have to work for it. They have no idea what they're getting into. So I'm sure some will lose interest when it takes more than 2 hours to create the next Skyrim, but I'd bet my paycheck that most will suffer through challenges because they know as a result they will get to create something cool, something meaningful and something that they have created.

Game design combines creativity with analytical problem solving. It brings art, computer science and math together. Could I ask for more?

So here begins a new adventure. An adventure into the somewhat unknown. I'm so stoked!

Keeping Things Fresh

After two years abroad I've returned to my old school. I'm sick of standardized tests and the horror that the IB program has apparently become. I'm back at a school were the average kid is below the national average in math. I'm back at a school that cares about kids and is more interested in producing good people than good test scores. It is a gift to have another chance at this school.

This time around I'm teaching Algebra 1, Geometry and Physics. The physics is old-hat, but the other two are new to me or at least mostly so. The newest of all is teaching such young students. I've generally taught 11th and 12th graders. So I'm having to retool a bit.

Our classes meet 4 days a week one of those being a 70 minute period. My approach will always be student centered even if it looks like "worksheets." It been going well, but I have come to dread my Wednesday's. I teach 3 of these long periods and its like pulling teeth to keep the kids focused. A colleague of mine mentioned pulling out one of Dan Meyer's 3 Act problems on the long periods and "who cares if it matches what going on the rest of the week."

This has always been my problem with Dan's problems. They're awesome, but how do they fit in? This year I find myself in a department struggling to find its identity and tempted to go old school "skill and drill."

So two weeks ago I decided to just try a problem. We had talked about exponents. So the Domino Problem seemed perfect.

After showing the intro video, the class looked at me like, "You kidding? You really want us to work on that." I stared back, "Uh, yeah."

5 minutes later the class was all over it. The results were amazing. Students were engaged and arguing over math. Perfection.

It went so well that the next week I pulled out another this time it was the Shipping Routes problem. The comments on the blog post seemed negative, but the idea seemed good to me, plus the math was approachable by my students.

Again the results were fantastic. And I'll admit when we did the times with decimals the whole class was stunned, myself included! Even better the one quiet girl who figured it out was beaming.

Selfishly these problems were great. They bought me SO MUCH capital in terms of classroom management. Each one of these problems took 40-50 minutes of class, but the next 20 minutes were some of the easiest I've ever had. Even the next day in class was easy. Not only were they easy for me the kids really learned something. AND. The kids were more productive the other days of week following the problems. So even if Dan's problems didn't move my curriculum forward, it and of themselves, they made my classes more efficient.

The lesson (re)learned was the need to change up class. To keep things fresh. What I was and am doing is good, but the students needed a change of pace.

Let's Play Spot the Error (Misconception)

A few months ago a bunch of Sports posters showed up in the hallways. Okay, great. Have the kids do some research into different sports as part of their PE curriculum. I think they might get more out of playing a sport, but hey what do I know? I think reading physics books is fun.

On closer inspection I saw that each of the sports was being related to Newton's Laws. As I read the posters it was clear students had simply found the law(s) on Wikipedia or some other site and then did their best to apply them. Sometimes the results were the "t-shirt versions" of the laws, i.e. short, simple and catchy, but incomplete. Such as:

Or:

But, mostly it was the application of the law that was wrong - no surprise there.

I don't share these to make fun of the students, they were doing their best, or to embarrass the teachers, they probably don't know any better. I shared these because the photos gave me an idea for a new game - "Spot the Error."

Lets hit misconceptions head-on. Not in the contrived language from a teacher, but in the language of peers (albeit younger peers). I would love to have a collection of student quotes on a full range of physics topics... I can see these as material for test questions, homework, or class discussions.

As a side note the quality of student work that is posted in public spaces is a big topic of discussion at our school.

Frozen Water "Sine Wave"

Some more video awesomeness.

I'm not sure I would call that a "sine" wave as Boing Boing did... but all the same some pretty cool visuals and some great potential links to physics and math. I'm teaching trig to my SL kids at the moment, might make for an interesting diversion. There is no place in the SL curriculum that hints that parameters such as amplitude and period can be functions rather than just constants... 

More Reflections - The IB and other Things

Moving back to greener pastures.

Next year I'm returning to my previous school. Leaving an overseas post, a great pay check and a school that I perceive to be in a pretty deep rut.

[Insert self-pitying rant on the failures of my current school].

This is my third school... I'm burned out. Tired. Frustrated. And still loving it when the light goes on and my kids get a tough concept.

IB it's not you. It's me?

With a senior class who doesn't have a single IB student likely to score above the world average and 25% of whom are likely to fail the diploma...  reflection comes quick and often. 

Looking over past posts as reminders of what went well (or not so well) I came across this at the bottom of a post about the unit circle.

Reflections: To be honest I don't know where the stage for this success was first set [...]. While having all the mathematical tools needed [...] is necessary I don't think it's sufficient. Two more pieces were needed:

1. Students feeling the freedom to tackle a problem with different methods, thus allowing them to see problems in the context that is most natural to them. 

1. Students being trained to solve new tough problems not simply repeating steps that the teacher has demonstrated on a whiteboard. 

A year after teaching that lesson on the Unit Circle I still believe those two pieces were the key to one of my most successful class periods in 10 years of teaching (and most other successes I've had).

Those two pieces seem to be in stark contrast to the demands of the IB and  other standardized test based programs.

Mechanical Integration - Surface Area

A clip from Dirty Jobs (one of my favorites) of a machine that calculates the surface area of irregularly shaped objects - in this case tanned hides. Too clever. Wish I'd seen this when I was teaching integration.

Spotted originally on Boing Boing.

IB Math SL and UbD

Could your students solve (with understanding) the following problem in 6 minutes with only 2-3 hours of class time and no prior exposure to binomial expansions or pascal's triangle?

Sure, my kids can write down the correct answer - they might even understand what they're doing - but it took a whole lot more than 2-3 hours to get them there.

I came to my current school a believer that the IBDP program was a good, even great, program for many students. I will be leaving with some serious doubts... In physics there are 6 hours set aside for kinematics but 18 for climate change and energy sources. Seriously? In Math SL I have 9 hours total for arithmetic/geometric sequences and series, binomial expansion plus rules of exponents and logarithms. Where's the time to develop either the need for these tools or any real understanding?

If you say it's supposed to happen in a prior class, then why isn't it in the presumed knowledge?

Today is a PD day. My job was to write enduring understandings (a la UbD) for my Math SL classes. So what is the "enduring understanding" of 2-3 hours spent on binomial expansion? Or for Math SL in general?

If I'm honest?

Students will understand that a big scary test that determines their college options is coming their way so regardless of personal interest they will pretend that they want to be engineers and "learn" math.

Or when thinking about arithmetic and geometric series: 

Students will understand that these questions are easy points on the IB test and should not be missed and that missing these questions will be followed by a long frustrated rant from the teacher or appropriate administrator.

For the sake of transparency maybe I should put this on my wall?

Please tell me I'm wrong. I know people live, breath and bleed the IBDP. It's just that I'm losing my faith. 

Independent Project Elective

This year I've been running an independent project class. Some of the kids are doing really cool things. Pin-hole camera, wind-powered generator, app development... Others are struggling with the lack of structure and the realization that when projects are not handed to you by a teacher they're hard! A few groups are a bit slippery about how much they are really getting done... Still not sure how to handle that when every project is different.

Anyways. The real reason for the this post is to beg and plead for folks to give my students real feedback that comes from someone besides their teacher! Each week (supposedly) students are creating a short blog post describing their work, any struggles and what the plan is for the next week. I decided early on that the blogs should be the student's space, while required, the posts don't need to get marked up in red ink so to speak by their teacher...

If you've got 5-10 minutes to browse the RSS feed it would be much appreciated.

RSS Feed

Did You Hear What I Heard? - Value of Lectures

The other morning on my way to make a few copies I saw a fellow teacher confronting a couple students over what appeared to be copying of homework - a practice that admittedly is pretty rampant at our school. I stood trapped at the copier, knowing what was coming my way - a one-sided conversation about the wrongs of copying. I braced myself and prepared my smiling and nodding muscles.

The monologue covered the predictable ground that copying work is not only wrong but results in little or no learning. I was smiling and nodding in agreement, but not feeling the passion of my colleague. Then came the unforeseen twist. This teacher goes on to explain that they intentionally change the style of bullet points used during lectures and then at the end of the lecture asks the students flip through their notes to see that they blindly copied the variety of bullet points... Using this as a jumping off point to explain that copying doesn't equate to learning. At this point in the conversation I tried to keep a straight face and not laugh at the irony.

This teacher had just equated the educational value of taking notes during their lectures with copying homework!

I couldn't agree more.

Modeling Approach Assessment with Robots

I always struggled with labs, they too easily become plug and chug fill in the blank labs or week long experiments that don't really relate to the current topic in class - the later is not a bad thing but maybe not as awesome as it should be. The physics modeling curriculum is helping on both fronts. While I'm not in love with everything about the physics modeling curriculum, the labs are simple, beautiful and well thought out. It's a great supplement to the other PER tools I've picked up.

Some awkward scheduling around exam time forced some creative thinking (when given lemons?). Rather than give a standard paper based assessment I used the school's ample supply of Lego robots as the source of motion.

Lego robots at their simplest.

The kids were asked to the create the usual representations of the motion; written, graphical and motion maps. With the robots "complex" motions are easily created. Different speeds, pauses  and changes in direction are simple to create and program - motions that are challenging at best with the more typical inclined ramp. Perfect for kinematics when the cause of motion is not an issue.

Collaboration beats the socks off silent individual work.

The results were this side of outright awesome, but the students were engaged, working together, solving familiar problems in a new context not to mention see constant acceleration for the first time.What's not to love?

For those interested I linked the handout and the RobotC files. The programming is sloppy as the idea to include a light that blinked every second was a last minute idea and I didn't have time to be clever and create a cleaner program. The first two programs involve constant velocities and the third has a linear velocity.

Handout

RobotC

Geogebra, Beats and Tone Generators

For one reason or another I was looking over my IB Physics site. I haven't taught IB Physics is 6 years now and so I don't spend much energy updating the site. I happened onto my page about "Beats" and found that I'd written one of those "clearly, it's obvious" type justifications with zero real justification. Oops.

I got to thinking about tone generators to build up some level of justification, but I couldn't (quickly) find a web-based one. So I turned to Geogebra. Lo and behold they have a PlaySound command. Awesome! An hour later I was able to put together the an applet which could certainly be expanded to create a more complete web-based tone generator. You've got to love them Geogebra folk.

Geogebratube: http://www.geogebratube.org/student/m21179

The Most Valuable Lesson I've Learned in 10 Years of Teaching

When I began teaching I knew something was wrong with how I had been taught and how I was currently teaching. I did what I could to adjust my style, but the change was slow. I couldn't put my finger on the problem - so I couldn't really solve the problem. Each year I'd try something new... then in my 5th year of teaching I took over a math position from a friend and former colleague. She gave me some of her math materials to give me a head start. I took her materials and (with minor adjustments) just ran with them. In the process I discovered or at least was able to verbalize what had been missing for me all these years. The simple "Joy of Discovery. "

During that year; I watched kids get excited about making connections. They cheered when they began seeing patterns. My math classes in school were never like this... I wasn't using flashy multimedia, or a modern textbook, kids were simply working together, making observations and drawing conclusions. Magic.

Why are people willing to spend hours working out Sudoku puzzles? Why are kids excited to spend hours with a video game? Why do mathematicians and scientist devote their lives to research?

There is inherent joy in the act of discovery. As a species that evolved intelligence at the cost of physical strength it shouldn't surprise us that we have a built in reward system for learning and discovery.

It seems to me that modern math education is not in need of more technology or new standards. Rather as math educators we need to focus our energy on returning the joy of discovery to our math classes. Isn't that what is so good about Dan Meyer's 3 Act approach and so wrong with the Khan Academy approach?

This topic came up again as I was describing the Exeter Math program to an administrator  I found that I was using language very similar to as if I was teaching a textbook driven course - which was a bit troubling. Yet there is a key difference. While Exeter is paper based and not all the problems are amazing - it forces the joy of discovery back into the classroom. The burden to discover is on the students. It is a problem first solution second approach. The complete opposite of most (math) classrooms.

If I reflect on all the PD, all the TED talks, all the blog posts, all the books and all the long conversations over a beer or two three the most valuable lesson I have learned in 10 years of teaching has be the recognition of the value, the motivation, and the sheer joy of discovery.

What would you do?

I work at a small, independent and expensive school. We work in a (international) community that does not have many other educational options for students. So here's my dilemma...

In one of my math classes I have 7 of the 8 seniors and there is some very difficult classroom dynamics and chemistry that comes with such a small group that also lacks academic leaders. At this point I see 3 students that are sources of great distraction or negativity. They seem almost proud of their dysfunction. I also see 3-4 students who are quieter, more introspective and who are ready to learn and succeed, but struggle to overcome the distractions of the other 3. I have had individual conversations with this second group and they have expressed great frustration with their classmates (in all classes).  These 3 distracting students are, in the words of a grade 12 student, “hindering our education.”

For me that is a big fat line in the sand that you don't cross. To mix, confuse and create my own metaphor... You can lead a horse to water and maybe you can't make the horse drink, but you sure as hell better not let one horse stop the rest of the herd from getting a drink.

This is not a new problem, but with IB exams coming all too soon there is a sense of urgency I feel more each time I wake up. The school has failed to solve the problem and many teachers seem content to simply chuckle and shake their heads.

So. What would you do?

What Got Me Thinking - Sept 14

Whiteboarding Mistake Game: A Guide - A great addition to whiteboarding in class. A long post, but worth the read.

Clever Hans - A story of a clever horse that "could do math" and a reflection on how it could and should change what we do as (math) teachers.

"The Exeter (Math) Series" - A series of posts on Exeter Math. Includes many resources, discussions of pedagogy and much more. A must read for those interested in Exeter Math.

The World of Mathematical Reality - via Keith Devlin

Robots & Calculus - Part 1

As part of SL Math I have to teach Kinematics, last year I sort of rushed through it. I was too easily convinced by the smiles and nods that learning was happening. In calculus, I've never felt like my students accomplished much more than simply learning a series of steps to get the right answer. Sure they can solve the problems and most of my kids got very good IB scores last year. But! I wanted more.

Too often in SL Math kinematics is window dressing and an excuse for context on a calculus problem and rarely more than that. As a physics guy I see kinematics as the driving motivation behind differential calculus. So this year I swore I'd actually walk the talk. In come the robots!

My school, like any other, has its problems, but we are blessed with dreamers and an administration that are willingly to fund those dreams. 4000 euros later we have lego robots coming out our ears. Our school already supports two FTC teams, one middle and one high school team, so it wasn't a stretch to find more funding for robots.

The students were given about 40 minutes to create their "car" with the two stipulations that it had one motor and allowed for easy removal of the NXT brick (so other classes could use the brick).

And now for the calculus...

Part 1 - Constant Velocity

I pre-programmed 7 functions for the students. The first 3 are constant velocity functions. Student's used Logger Pro's video capture and analysis features to create position and velocity graphs and equations for each function.

Students wrote each set of equations on the board so as a class we had more data from which to make conclusions. I proceeded  to math-teacher-ninja them to see that the slope of the velocity equations was virtually zero when compared to the other parameters. Then the jump to see the similarity in the slope of the position and the constant value of the velocity was quick and easy. Leaving the students to conclude (written in my 2-grade hand writing):

If s(t) is linear then v(t) is constant.  Velocity is the slope of position. 

What more could a teacher ask for?

After these conclusions the students worked some very simple problems. Working with equations, graphs and most importantly writing rules to go from linear position to constant velocity and vice versa. I dangled the idea of the integration constant in front of them, not looking for full understanding, but trying to raise awareness that information was lost or is missing when moving back and forth between position and velocity.

Next up: Linearly increasing velocity in Part 2. Coming soon...

The Class I Always Wanted

In high school and college, being the nerd that I am, I always dreamed of a fantastic course where I and other students simply got to ask cool questions and where we were given the time, resources and space to find the answers. I dreamed of learning to program something that I wanted create - not being told what to create. I dreamed of building a robot or a contraption that did nothing useful but was fun and challenging. I dreamed of a true nerd elective where problems came first and solutions came second, where problems came from creativity and solutions came from a desire to learn and not from a lecture.

Next year I get to create that course. I get to teach a Nerd Elective! The course was created on the premise that many students at my school were not being challenged with the current math and science structure. We have the beginnings of a robotics program and the resources to support it. The stage is set. Now all I have to put the structure together and create the environment for the students to thrive in...

The Plan So Far...

• I will give a brief intro to some ideas: Lego robots, iPad app development, Flash programming, Kodu Game Lab (maybe) and anything else I can find in the next 5 weeks. 
• Students will create their own question or project including time frames with goals, deadlines and expected challenges. 
• Students will work alone or hopefully in groups of 2. 
• Final choice of projects and deadlines will be supervised and negotiated. 
• Projects MUST be interesting to the STUDENT. 
• Student will create a record (blog?) of there work including discoveries, progress and challenges.  

What I need...

• Framework to foster creativity and maintain accountability. 
• Rubrics to grade student work?
• Reasonable expectations for students. 
• More project platform ideas. 
• General advice. What am I not thinking about? 

Piece-wise Function

My IB students are working on a portfolio project that will requires some piece-wise functions to model. I used the function below as a tongue-in-cheek example of a piece-wise function. Including the idea that changes in function type ideally have a contextual reason or event that changed the system or scenario being modeled.

Oddly enough they all understood what I was talking about...

What Got Me Thinking - June 1st

Mindset - Carol Dweck's book discussing the ideas of "closed vs. growth" mindsets. A very good (and easy) read. If you haven't read it you need to. It was the summer read at my previous school and for my current school.

Grit - Character is a better measure of student success than most anything else. Similar idea but maybe with more resolution than Mindset.

Our Buggy Moral Code - Dan Ariely's TED talk. Not really math/physics related, but pretty interesting research on irrational behavior. He touches on the ideas of pain but mainly focuses on cheating and what influences when and how much we cheat.

Flipped Classroom? - An article on the ever more talked about "flipped classroom." Why does a video lecture seem so much better than asking the kids to go home and read a chapter? I can't help but think that a flipped classroom is just passing the buck...

Building a New Culture of Teaching and Learning - Great commentary on schools and learning. Worth the time investment to listen.

People Stuck on an Escalator - Was used by a former head of math to set the stage for an all faculty discussion on Mindset. He also used it to start his classes each year.

Inspired by Coffee

The other day I was sitting in a coffee shop and thought to myself, "Self, this is a nice place to be. I like sitting here." To which I responded, "Yeah, why don't our classrooms look more like this?"

Not the actual shop, but you get the point...

Internal monologues aside, I have honestly begun to wonder why we don't draw more inspiration from places that people enjoy spending time in? What if our students actually enjoyed being in a classroom? Next year, for the first time in 7 years, I will have my own classroom... I desperately want to make it a space that feels good. I might even spring for an espresso machine.