#clmooc Make 3: Games as lens

This summer we are writing the manuscript for the fourth edition of our student text book (Essential Study Skills: the complete guide to university – since you’re asking… oh – you didn’t?!)… Too busy to join in officially with #clmooc I’ve been a joyful lurker – especially this week where by happy coincidence I was running a session on ‘Game-ifying your classes’ as the MOOC was exploring game making – and games as a critical lens (http://clmooc.educatorinnovator.org/2015/2015/07/06/make-cycle-3-level-up-your-game-design/  ) 

I ran my session using the resources shared by Alex Moseley and Nicola Whitty: http://playthinklearn.net/ten-steps-to-game-design/ There is a PPT for the facilitator and cards for the stages of game-making: context, constraints, story layer and a sort of ‘secret santa’ card – given only to one person in each group – who then has to introduce a random element into the game: cheese, a penguin…

For our session I distributed chalks to write and draw upon the black sugar paper covered tables – I put out balloons, magazines for collage-production, glue and scissors and random objects to make the room feel welcome and playful…

We enjoyed the game making – especially the brilliant idea to produce a huge snakes and ladders cloth for the floor – with huge furry dice… and game cards for maths… We thought how all this could be produced by cross-collaboration – DTP producing the floor cloth – art helping with design and colour – and then ALL the students in ALL the subjects could produce the quiz cards – each year… Music students could entertain us as we played – and ICT students could produce online versions of the game to share…

As an aside, we invite our Becoming students to produce games as part of their course reflection: https://noblechloe.wordpress.com/first-year-learning-logs/first-year/learning-logs-21-to-30/learning-log-week-21/ - and the group in this blog went on to build their game into the final Performance: https://noblechloe.wordpress.com/first-year-learning-logs/first-year/learning-logs-21-to-30/learning-log-week-26/ … and what a day that was!

… And then we thought – we could alter the Moseley and Whitty cards slightly and get our Student Ambassadors to produce really cool induction and welcome activities…  and I told the participants about #clmooc and game week …

A virtuous circle!!