So I tried to make a video game...

It's been a roller coaster of a year - I say this almost every year - so I guess it has been a roller coaster of almost a decade. But this year was probably the toughest and yet at the same time the most enlightening out of all of them. 

Long story short, I took some extra time off from full time teaching duties. Step away, rethink my life and how I want to spend the second half of it now that I've crossed the 40 year threshold.

I always wanted to finish making a game. I learned a bit of Unity back during COVID, but when home learning started ramping up and we started looking into some really exciting ideas at school - introducing an idea called 'Quest' (something I would really like to reflect back on one day here) - I ended up putting the game stuff to the side. 

Fast forward 4 years and as some of you may or may not know, Unity went through some weird payment stuff and so I decided to give the Godot engine (an open source free engine) a go. 

The Learning Process

I found some free and discounted online tutorials for Beginner Godot courses and also for pixel art. I wasn't too worried about the audio part since I did a lot of that stuff in uni so I just needed a refresher (and some new gear since I sold off most of mine when going into teaching)

Learning Godot was quite a challenge. I always felt that I was missing something and wasn't sure how the tutor went from A to B and more importantly, WHY they did it that way. Eventually I came to accept this feeling and move on, hoping that later things will start to connect itself in my brain.

Pixel Art was really interesting. I don't consider myself an illustrator at all. I doodle occasionally, but never really worked on it to improve. But the thing that opened my eyes with the pixel art learning was it taught me what NOT to do when teaching a skill. 

In theory their approach made sense. "I do and then you do". But the problem was that too much of this resulted in feeling like I was following a Art 4 Kids Hub tutorial, where I didn't really learn how to draw or create my own pixel art - all I learned was how to copy the tutor's work.

Music wise, I needed to learn how to use a different DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) since I only had a really old version of Cubase that ran on a really old macbook that I don't own anymore. Also bought a mini MIDI keyboard and deep dived into the world of VSTi's (virtual instruments) for a week or so. This would lead me to dipping my toes into some basic musicology stuff like the "Cycle of 5ths" and some common 4 chord chord-progressions.

Putting it all together

The most challenging part of this was not setting a plan for when to work on the coding, the art assets or the audio. It was constantly switching hats. From programmer, to level designer, to animator, to background designer, to audio designer, to music composer, etc... 

Sometimes I would sit down and create a bunch of different 'sprites' (2D models) and some animations but completely forget that I did these because I would get stuck on some bug in the code for a few days.

      

I think the most fun I had was composing the main background music for the game. Creating layers, trying to do build ups, breakdowns, beat drops, and seeing how it all came together. It did not feel like a chore at all. But to be fair I only needed to make 2 songs. One for the menu and one for the game.

The game itself was a very simple infinite runner platformer. Think like, pared back visuals like Flappy Bird but jump platforming like Geometry Dash or Jetpack Joyride.

I've only been learning these for about 3-4 months, so I didn't want to bite off more than I could chew. I just wanted to finish a game - from start to finish - and make every asset on my own and experience that journey. 

In the end I did end up using some other people's assets for a couple of sound effects (footsteps, jump and game over), but still very proud that I was able to create the rest of the assets myself. 

Reflection

I've been making mini updates to the game here and there. Some new sprites, updated backgrounds, fixed some bugs and added small features like a random quote on the start menu (like Minecraft).

I think the thing that really helped me get this completed was thinking about the target audience. It's aimed at kindergarten students (as that was the grade I was teaching before I went on leave) and there were a couple of kids who really like ninjas. 

Had I just tried to make this very generic, aimed at for everyone, then it probably wouldn't be near as engaging. 

The game

Anyway, if you want to check it out, you can do so HERE.

It works on mobile and desktops. 

I'm thinking of little adjustments to make to it moving forward, but nothing too crazy. Maybe some little polishes here and there and then move on to starting a new, slightly bigger project.

Epilogue... (kinda)

One thing that I did take away from this - once I started working as a casual, although I didn't have any work to take home, I was still feeling pretty exhausted from needing to be thinking on my toes all the time. Because of this, the development slowed to a crawl until I forced myself to work through the sleepiness just to get a little bit closer to finish it. 

This is something that I hope to continue doing as a hobby. I have no ambitions in trying to pursue this hardcore and eventually make it a job. In a lot of ways, thinking about making this a job actually deters me. I think it will take away a lot of the fun and creativity if I make it something where my livelihood depends on it...

My journey as a gamer turned learner (part 3)

Continuing from my last post, I wanted to talk about how my experiences with Starcraft 2 (SC2) helped me understand the connection between games and learning. As I pursued my postgraduate degree in education, I found myself fascinated by the intersection of games and learning, and SC2 was the perfect game for me to explore that connection.

Unlike with WoW, I was no longer satisfied with simply finding easy strategies to win. Yes I started seeing the importance of the 'why', but I was still more focused on the result. Instead, I wanted to truly understand the game mechanics and the reasoning behind them. Through podcasts, news articles, and videos, I dove into the world of SC2, and thanks to Day9tv and his dailies, I began to learn the "why" behind the game's strategies.

Even though I never reached the highest ranks in SC2, I'm proud of how far I came, starting in Bronze 1 and reaching Gold 3 or 4 before running out of time due to my full-time job and newborn child. But more than that, I'm proud of what I learned from the game and how it influenced other aspects of my life.

I realized that the macro mechanics of SC2 were my strong suit, just as I was better at thinking of big ideas and interconnecting them in my job. But I struggled with the micro mechanics, or the execution of those ideas. This realization helped me understand my strengths and weaknesses and how to leverage them in my personal and professional life.

For example, a little after this, I started playing (low-level) competitive basketball with some old friends. I had a solid understanding of the game, I knew what type of game plan to go in with for the players that we had (strengths and weaknesses) and read the situations during a game to make little adjustments. However, having not played for many, MANY years, my mechanics of the game itself was rather rusty. In other words, I did not have the skills to execute my plan. So using the lessons learnt from SC2, I examined what skills I needed most, prioritised and started researching drills and tips that I can practice on a daily basis. 

One of these was losing weight. My weight got in the way of my ability to be quick, my endurance and I also had a hunch it played a role in getting minor injuries often. This took me down a whole new rabbit hole. It was a lot of experimenting, research and reflecting. Eventually I was able to find some new habits that I could sustain even after playing basketball - and able to pick up easily again after gaining a lot of this weight back from no longer playing basketball** and lockdowns.

**Not playing competitive basketball made me lose a lot of motivation to exercise as I couldn't find a WHY that I could really latch onto.

A really big lesson I learnt from Day9tv that I always keep in my mind in ALL aspects of my life is the mindset - "What can I do better NEXT TIME?" I found that 99% of the time when things weren't going to plan, whether it be in a video game, basketball, classroom or in life, I started to stray from the original plan and try to patch leaks on the fly, usually making it worse or having no effect. But with the "next time" mindset, I stick to the plan as much as possible until the end of that session and reflect on it afterwards and THEN make adjustments to the plan where needed for next time. In games this is quite easy to do, as a lot of them have the abilities to save replays so you can go back and analyse your performance. IRL things however, it's harder to do. I normally jot something down quickly on my phone or a piece of paper when I notice things I might need to address for next time - usually the small things I might forget. The big things I will always remember first anyway :)

To add to this, SC2 was primarily a 1v1 game. It meant that no matter what, YOU are responsible for every outcome. I took this mentality on to team games as well. That's why the mindset is "What can I do better", not "What can they do better". I did realise soon though, lots of people find this hard to swallow. They don't want to believe that they are flawed and can improve. Like I used to hear a lot in team video games like Dota and Overwatch - "Everyone on my team sucks. Except me." I truly believe people who hold onto this type of idea tightly will hit a big wall in their lives.

Going back to basketball, I took this approach so in the first season starting 'the plan', I was doing my drills, my exercise and diets, all the while reflecting on the season. I didn't look at executing, just treated it like a practice season. The next off-season, I stepped on the accelerator and every free moment I had I would use this to practice my dribbling and shots. Sometimes I'd call my teammates to see if they were up for a practice session together. These cooperative sessions were also valuable because I could pick their brain for feedback.

The next season after some nail-biting games in the playoffs, we won our first (and only) championship as that particular team. When I watch sports or eSports finals and see the players just collapse into tears, I never understood why - until that final buzzer in the finals. It was something that needed to be worked on over time and results weren't immediate. A lot of the time I did question whether I needed to scrap my entire original plan and make big adjustments - but I stuck to it and it did pay off. Obviously I wasn't the sole reason our team won. One of my close teammates (who practiced with me often) also did the same thing. The rest of our team were just straight up hustlers. There were no free baskets and we all had each others' backs. I just wanted to make sure that I built myself enough so that I wouldn't be a detriment to the team, but a contributor.

The skills I learned from SC2 naturally lead to other competitive games I played later on like CS:GO, Dota 2, Rocket League, or Overwatch. Nowadays, I don't play competitive games often, because if I commit, I dive into the deep end and it just takes over my schedule, my mind and my life. I am more of a spectator, appreciating the awesomeness others showcase. But I still apply the lessons learnt in other aspects of my life and I don't think it will ever go away.

WoW helped me extend my online research skills, and analysing gameplay to improve. It started me on a journey of learning. SC2 humbled me, made me realise we learn at different speeds, importance is persistence and consistency, every game is a step to improve in our next game and looking at things I can do to help the team, rather than the other way around.

Learning Minecraft

I've begun my learning journey in Minecraft recently, and who better to do it with than my 6 year old son. We've played Terraria in the past before (pre hard mode only) and a little familiar with it, so we approached it thinking it'd be the same. I've also gone through the Tutorial World in the Education Edition, so packed with this knowledge, I thought we would be okay. We set one rule (well it's more for me), and that is that we are not allowed to look anything up DURING gameplay. We are to note it down if we aren't sure of something or something doesn't work and we do the research afterwards for the next session. So far we've had 3 sessions in total (2 in Education Edition and 1 in Java) and it's been quite interesting.

The beginning

Our initial session in Education Edition was relatively easy. I had it set to Peaceful and realised it didn't affect hunger so after my son got accustomed to the controls and the new 3D environment, I put it up to Normal. The crafting recipe box that shows up makes things so much easier - I remember when I first tried to play a few years ago, I was constantly looking up recipes because I had no idea. Also, from my run through of the Tutorial World in MCEE, I had some basic ideas on what we needed to make to get going at the beginning - crafting table, furnace, chest, and house.

Crafting Table, Furnace and Chest

         

Crafting recipes on the left hand side

                                                                     
We were able to get to stone-made equipment, found some coal to make torches, defeated a few zombies, and we were on our way to experimenting a little and exploring more. I also made use of the Classroom Mode to try a few things out. I disabled PvP damage as we were accidentally hitting each other when we were mining closeby and also teleported my son to the house when he ventured too far off and became lost. I used the fixed equip command to place quill and cameras in our hotbars so we could journal our adventures there. That was the original plan - to do a virtual journal rather than via the blog.

Don't copy that command - it's wrong :(

The last two hotbars are the fixed slots. Camera and Quill (writable_book)

These three are photos taken from the in game camera. (You can use an item called Portfolio to export them as image files)

However, we ran into a little hiccup. My son's game was crashing frequently in our first 2 sessions and when we booted up for the 3rd one, we found out he only had 3 trial sessions left! So rather than playing this out and possibly getting one, maybe two more sessions in, I purchased an extra retail copy for my son and continue/restart the journey there. I mean how different could it be?

Same but different

I created the world and a house with the usual starter setup as mentioned before on my own so that when we have the next Minecraft session, it'd all be there. Java version was pretty much the same but I noticed a few differences. For example, it had the recipe box to tell me what I can make, though it only showed me recipes I unlocked from obtaining new ingredients. This meant I couldn't plan ahead with what materials I needed to find like I did in MCEE, making it a more "raw" playing experience.

Crafting recipe guide on retail.

I also found it much more difficult. It was on Normal, but I never died in MCEE, but I died on my fifth or sixth night on retail. I realised the hard way, that when you die, you drop EVERYTHING you have on you. I was a little greedy because I found an iron-rich area, got carried away mining it all and pushed my luck with time, even though I knew it was going to be night very soon. To make matters worse, I was low on torches and quite far from my house! I saw the death message in the chat channel, so I went back to retrieve my hard earned iron and stone items, but I didn't even make it halfway there; shot down by some skeletons. So I thought I'd sleep until morning and go when it's safe. But alas, I get the message, "there are enemies nearby so you can't sleep". So I AFK'd for a few minutes in the house and waited in real (game) time until morning to collect my belongings. As most of you veteran Minecrafters can guess (and probably facepalming right now), my belongings were gone. I was naked except for the clothes assigned to the default Steve skin I chose. In just a few short moments, all that hard work amounted to nothing. That's when I realised that death in this game mode (on Normal anyway) is something you need to actually worry about and plan ahead to avoid happening!

Luckily, I still had the house, crafting table, furnace chests and bed so when my son and I started our 3rd Minecraft session, 1st in the Java version, we had somewhere safe to hide. Just before we booted this up though, I found out about player skins and it made me realise why so many students in my classes in the past were so fond of pixel art. I got an Optimus Prime skin for my son and a guy with a Chicago Bulls shirt for myself. I also tried editing mine and the experience made me definitely want to go back and revisit this aspect, try to make my own skin from scratch.

Reflection - comparing the two so far

After the 3rd session, we found some more iron to make my son an iron chest armor and myself an iron sword. We stocked up on some food, I tried fishing and we expanded the house just a little in size. I tried planting some seeds and my son planted some trees right outside the house and it was a great experience for him to see his trees grow, absolutely amazed him. I also used the tip I found in the Global Minecraft Mentor resources about using a shovel to pave roads, and my son is obsessed with this! He is so busy creating paths wherever we go, that I need to make lots of extra shovels, but he also drops to his death occasionally too.

I must say, having some basic background knowledge of the game made this much more enjoyable than when I first tried to dabble in it years ago. I don't mind looking up guides when stuck in a game, but back then, it was like I had to alt-tab out constantly. It was like somebody giving me some tools, throwing me into a forest and telling me to craft some furniture. I was just completely overwhelmed! The Tutorial World in MCEE showed me just enough to get me kickstarted in the game, without feeling the need to know more. From these basics, I would try to expand on it out of curiosity. It actually made me want to experiment and find things out myself, because I understood the basics - I didn't want to be told the answer. This in turn would help me remember things more effectively as I was "learning by doing". When you have your own "aha" moments.

There were a few things I missed about the Education Edition from playing the retail one. First is the clarity of name plates. In MCEE, it's really easy to spot where the other players are. The name plates are clearly visible through objects. But in retail, unless I have line of sight of the player, it's very difficult to spot them. So when my son is yelling for help, I am frantically running and looking around, whilst asking him to describe where he is. (Which can also be a good exercise too!) I also miss the camera and the quill, and the ability to add fixed inventory slots. My son loved taking photos, just like he does in real life when playing with my phone (so many random photos on there thanks to him), and when he found out you can set the camera up on a stand and you can take selfies, he was even happier.

One thing I did like about the retail was the way the crafting recipe book worked. I liked how it slowly unlocked recipes as you gathered/discover new materials. It gives a more steady sense of progression, whereas in MCEE you can click a button to see all available recipes, making it easy to just get either overwhelmed by the choices or over ambitious and go straight for the top. (making it more of a result rather than journey based experience) The difficulty isn't a big thing, I can always make it higher on MCEE and I'm sure it'll kick my backside either way.

I will continue the Minecraft sessions with my son on retail, just because there's no trial limit for him. And I might play around with the Windows 10 version that comes free for people who purchased the retail, since you can cross platform play on that. I think that's something MCEE can benefit from, as the school I'm in doesn't have a space where 30 kids can play at the same time. Lots of students have P.E (Pocket Edition) on their devices, so it would make things logistically easier. Also, since it's a little difficult for our school to set up an "always on" server, the cross platform feature again would really be useful.

My plan is to learn the game with my son from the retail version and use the knowledge gained from that to test out things on MCEE. Whether it's lesson ideas, map ideas, designs, etc...

I recorded some footage of one of our MCEE sessions a week ago and edited it so it doesn't go for 70 minutes! Enjoy :)

Fictional Class Country - Students learning from doing - Teachers learning in order to teach! Observations and reflections.

For the past two years, I've introduced a Class currency as part of the Government unit to the year six classes I've had. At the start, it simply served as an additional classroom management strategy, to compliment the Classcraft elements already in place. However, as we were also doing a modified version of the PEO's role play activity, Parliament of Wizards, where we transform the class into a fictional country, I thought it'd be a good opportunity to use this currency to add some mathematics into the mix.

We started it out by first having everyone receive an equal amount every week. They had expenses such as desk rent and fees to use iPads and computers. Just like in the real world, nothing was free.
As we progressed and we started to create jobs. At first I created these jobs to get it up and running. Usual classroom jobs such as messengers, lunch collectors, book hander-outerers, etc, were the first to be taken by selected students and earn an income. I started to create more such as secretaries, cleaners, librarians, IT specialists, etc... We then introduced an income tax, where the money collected from these taxes will pay for the class elected representatives of the fictional Parliament. These representatives would then need to create and pass bills and use some of this money to benefit the class. For example, the Sports party would suggest using it to run a soccer competition, and the money be used as a prize pool. But one problem I had was that I was running out of jobs, and also I had to keep printing more currency because 99% of the income was coming from me!

The next year, we were able to transition to this a little faster, as I was able to take a lot of what I learnt the pilot year to improve on it. A few students the previous year created a business to sell sweets. This was really interesting to me, because in essence, these students were spending real money, in order to gain fake money! The reason they did this was to accumulate enough money to purchase the desks they wanted, in order to be able to sit together once again (and permanently for the rest of the year!). It made me think about the aspect of value. To me, it was just like Monopoly money, play money for a role play task in class. But for some of them, they saw enough value out of it that they were willing to spend their pocket money in order to gain this currency. Even though it was due to ulterior motives, it still did fascinate me that this even occurred!

So back to the point - the second year, I encouraged students to create businesses. At the start, many of them stuck to selling lollies again. However, this started to become not worthwhile for them, as the competition drove the prices down. The returns just wasn't worth the real money investment! So we started looking at what types of businesses exist in our community. They saw that it wasn't just goods, but there also were services. Students started to be more creative; some created items, such as duct-tape wallets. The previous year had a group of students do the same thing, but this time it was a little different. One of the students was a big Steve Jobs fan and using his skills/knowledge in Apple marketing and design, he somehow made students WANT his particular brand. He even tried to patent his design! Other students used their skills in IT, website creation, arts and craft, etc, and offered these as services to their classmates as well.

This second lot also were more active in the elections for representatives and in adding to the class constitution. They were constantly holding meetings to try and pass bills and the week building up to the next big election would have the two major parties furiously campaigning to try and get the majority votes come election day. Both years I ended up keeping the system going for the remainder of the year as so many of the students enjoyed it so much. Students not only learnt about Government, persuasive skills, poster/website/video creation, budgeting, tax, business but also were able to learn other "non school-based" skills through experience. They needed to work on people skills, gaining trust to build strong political and/or business relationships, for example.

The second year also saw a few future entrepreneurs, creating businesses, selling them off and buying others. Some would group up and pool their money to start one, some would go around trying to investors. But I still found myself too tempted to intervene to try and keep it more in line with the "vision" I had. Perhaps I just wanted to play too?

Now this year, using all the things I've learned so far, I've decided to do it again. This time, I've got a few other classes on board. We all use the same currency, so it's kind of like the EURO. However, each class is free to run their country the way the class teacher or students want. Some classes had really high income as the pay there was just very generous. On the other hand, some classes had very low income, as they made it a little more difficult to earn the currency. This made cross country trading and business a little difficult, and in hindsight, I shouldn't have had everyone use the same currency. Having different currencies would be another great way to look at exchange rates and the notion of value even further!

For my own class, we have an exchange system of sorts. They can exchange Classcraft gold for the currency. But the exchange rates change weekly depending on how much is bought/sold. I am also trying to "sell off" a lot of jobs so that eventually, only a few people will be actually getting income directly from me. This should prevent me from needing to constantly print more currency.

Finally, I've been trying to study a little Economics in my free time, as I realised this is something that could help me improve the system. Thank you to Crash Course for their easy to follow and entertaining videos! John and Hank Green used to host a lot of the episodes, but as they started branching out to cover more and more subjects and topics, they inevitably got more people to help! I never picked Economics up in high school so I've really had no idea, basically learning by doing - just like the students! A lot of the times when watching the videos, particularly about inflation and deflation, I find myself thinking, "Hey, that's what happened to us last time when so and so ...!"

Here's the first episode for Crash Course: Economics, if you want to see what it's like.

I've noticed that the increased focus on the economy of the country, has created more thought by the students when thinking about the constitution and introducing new bills. They realise that they can't please everyone, and everything has a compromise. Should be interesting to see how this year's system develops as I think this is the most comprehensive version yet! I'd like to write it all out as a system for other teachers to follow (if they want to), but I still feel like it's not quite there and it's still in its alpha stage.

Overall though, it does seem to be improving every year, and this year I think I have everyone at least somewhat engaged in the experience. They all know that they have a voice and the power to make changes in the class. It allows a lot of students to break out of their shells; I can see some of them being killer marketers, salespeople, business managers, designers, etc... This year, more than ever, I'm going to really try hard to intervene as little as possible, because I think if something goes horribly wrong, it's a great experience to learn from and try to pull the country out of it. I mean, at the end of the day, it's not a real country. It's just a game. And like any other games, it should encourage you to take risks, learn from mistakes without any real life repercussions.

I will try to update the blog with any more interesting observations and development as we go. If you have any suggestions please feel free to leave a comment below!

Sorry for the big wall of text! If I remember to post more frequently, I could keep it more succinct. (But then again, I'm not very good at keeping things short... yet!)

iPad session reflection

Just wanted to quickly write this up before I forget. A few days back I was with a year 5 class doing team teaching with iPads. It was their first session, so I went along with my 'lesson plan' which I had prepared for all the other introductory sessions. One of the activities for these sessions was a 'wikipedia game' (an idea I got from the Extra Creditz show on Gamifying Education ), where students start on a wikipedia page for a particular topic and have to find their way to the wikipedia page of a different particular topic via the use of links embedded in the information only. The first exercise was to get from "chair" to "whiteboard", and it was quite amazing to see the different strategies and methods all the students used to get from "chair" to "whiteboard". The average amount of links was 7, and the record set at the school was 2!

However, with this particular class, they didn't seem too interested. Perhaps it was too hard for this particular group? Although the lessons with iPads were only with year 5 and 6 classes, and the other year 5 and 6 (plus one year 4 class in a 4/5 composite class) seemed to relatively enjoy it... One particular student did the ol' "type up 'whiteboard' in the search column of wikipedia", to which I told him (like I did to all the others who tried this in previous classes) that it did not follow the rules and so this cannot be allowed. To this, he was quite upset because he tried to reason with me that since both his way and the game's way essentially gets you to the 'end point' that this should be fine. He was questioning why does he have to do it in a certain way? At the time I was slightly taken aback and fired back with the usual "it's not the way you are supposed to do it, so you are wrong!" response. After seeing this result in the student become completely disengaged with the activity, I went home to try and reflect on this activity and perhaps its execution.

After re-watching the Extra Creditz episode, I have started to consider that the topic itself was not very exciting. I mean a CHAIR and a WHITEBOARD!? Like WOAH slow down dude...Also if I wanted the activity done in a particular way, I think next time I should explain WHY I would like it done this way. Thinking back of the first class I did this with, I told them that since the class will be ultimately creating their own wiki page on Antarctica, this game should get them more familiar with how a wiki page could look like and how it could work. Therefore that class was given a sense of purpose. Hmm, now thinking back to the last class, the purpose I may have implied to that class would have been, "it's a competition, so WIN!" Meaning, that could be why the less interested students just tried to complete it as quickly as they could. (This is also another topic I want to write about in a future post.)

Another thing I have noticed during these iPad sessions is the amount of students who are into Minecraft. I have been following Minecraft Teacher's blog and have been interested in this game as a learning tool, but I never really got around to checking the game out. It made me start looking at the various sites dedicated to the game, even downloaded a free version of the game on iPad (which I know is nothing like the actual version out now) and when I revisited the Minecraft Teacher 's site, I noticed a post called Structured vs Unstructured. I thought it was a very interesting read and it got me to reflect on what kind of learning environment I prefer. I can see the pros and cons of both, but I guess, the best way would be to combine the two, although to get that 'perfect balance' might be a bit difficult, and it would really differ from class to class... Hmm...

Just some final thoughts/observations/notes, I've noticed most of the students (and teachers), seem to want to use the iPad for its apps. I get requests for various apps that can help various things. Also the lack of flash makes teachers not warm to it because a lot of the websites they want to use with the class are flash based. (and the apps that enable you to view flash content, are not free...). Moreover, from just looking at the classes in general, most of the students just want to play games, or hop on YouTube so it would be great if I can find a way so that these children can play these games but make it a learning experience at the same time. I can think of a few ways this can be done (because ultimately we're always learning something, especially from our hobbies), but I just find it hard for them to do this within their class' curriculums.
Finally, I just wanted to point out this excellent site I stumbled across whilst doing some research in preparation of these iPad sessions. The most awesome thing is, that all this was done by a year 9 boy! I just love seeing stuff like this... moments of the students teaching the teachers! I am trying to keep an open mind in my own iPad sessions, and even discovered a few whiz kids in year 6! (Making them my tech support guys to help me fix any bunged up ones :))


FINAL NOTE (I promise!): I am half tempted to set up a private Minecraft server just for students, and not be involved at all, and anything can go. Will it end up like Lord of the Flies? Will people create chaos, just because they can? Will they try to create some sort of agreement amongst each other? Or will people just stop playing there because, well it's the internet and they don't have to deal with that crap. Funny, how I am just foreseeing chaos no matter what. I just can't see it being a place where nothing is stirred up lol.