What is Games Based Blogging?

So what is exactly games based blogging? This is a special guest post by 3 students who are at the same school as Mr Roberts. We are looking for teachers, students and schools all over the world really to perhaps get involved in our project.

So what is our project about?

This is a student voice project where lead learners from a Secondary school (which is us and we are at saltash.net community school) have created our own fully resourced scheme of work for primary school teachers to teach primary pupils how to design their own computer game then through creative writing write the story behind the game through a series of blog posts. (Or you don’t have to be primary – we have some classes trying this out in our school in ICT in years 7-9)

When we say we have created the resources and scheme of work we have done some of the 1st parts but will then write the rest as we go along.

The objectives of this project are:

1. To help develop skills in creativity, self-confidence, critical thinking and new technologies.

2. To engage students in learning through the use of games.

3. To improve literacy through creating their own games and then using their imagination to creatively narrate the story behind their game.

4. To encourage students to read and write through the use of blogging and the engagement in this through feedback from peers and others all over the world by communicating their ideas to a global audience.

Project overview

The project takes place over a series of 5-6 weeks with a combination of input from the secondary students and time given in normal lessons for the students to work on the project within the primary school.

1. Lesson 1 – Introduction to project including Gaming & blogging, then in particular how to create your own Kodu game. This will take around 2 hours so can work as a 2 hour lesson or split into two 1 hour sessions.

2. Students group work – For a couple of weeks students work in groups independently to design, create and build their own games within their primary lessons. Students can email secondary students for support if they really need it but are encouraged to work together to overcome obstacles and barriers.

3. Teacher training on blogging – During this time and before the students begin creating their blogs the teachers attend a short professional development session at the Secondary school to help support them in supporting their primary students in creating their blogs.

4. Students Blog – Students carry out creative writing in a series of 3 blog posts, each blog post represents one chapter about the story behind the game they have created. During this time they are also able to try out and play each of the other groups games. A chapter or each blog post is posted a week apart to allow others from other schools or all over the world to comment on.

5. Students peer assess their games and blogs – They chose an overall ‘school’ winner to submit for the community competition. This winning game is then judged by the student judges at the secondary school and students are then invited to an awards ceremony before the end of term where prizes are awarded.

Do you like the sound of this project? Would you like to join us and take part in your school?

If you would like to give this a try either this year or in September then we can give you all the resources and lesson plans etc we just need to hear from you. Please email us at the address below and we will send you more information. We will be blogging and tweeting about our project as we go along. We visit our 1st primary school next week so please follow our highs and lows over the next 6 weeks.

Email: gamesbasedblogging@live.co.uk

Twitter: @gbblogging

Blog: http://gamesbasedblogging.wordpress.com/

Wikispace: http://gamesbasedblogging.wikispaces.com/

Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/gamesbasedblogging?feature=mhum

Thank you to Mr Roberts for allowing us to use his blog – we will begin to blog from our own from now on!