MTIE UCG

Platformer games as action games are very entertaining and challenging since its competitive nature. Trying to overcome obstacles along the way, catching points and jumping over enemies with great speed as in SONIC game, I felt as a truly heroe!  Platformer games encourage the tenacity and determination in our students. Games are great tools to hook students in the learning process if they are applied properly! For example "Bowman" could be used to notice force and angles as you can see below. I share some screen captures of the games I played. Sadly I could not play Mario for the plugins in my computer =(

Mr. Haskell taught us three kinds of educational games: 1. Serious games 2. Gamification 3. Commercial games All of them make the class enjoyable and interesting, all of them are powerful tools that teachers should use wisely to obtain great results. What could be better than learning by having fun! Besides we, as students, not only read about games, we also played a variety of them in the 3D gamelab as missions  without deadlines , we created our own games in Sploder, we received awards for our performance and more. I hope to see him again because I think he is a cool professor! 

Check the video of my mind map HERE

I could not play Zelda entering in the link left in the 3d gamelab platform but I found it online. I like it a little bit more than the last narrative games I played but again I could not kill any enemies and I got killed soon. I think that the 2D graphics are cool and enagaging no matter time maybe since I grew up playing games in 2D.  PLAY ZELDA! 

I have one word to describe narrative games, FRUSTRATING! I could not win any of the two games even if I tried three times. I wrote different commands such as "eat, climb, run, fish, swim" but none of them worked.  I wonder now if I am too stupid or this types of games are too hard, or too simple! What I liked is the story involved but nothing more, I hope my classmates could score better than me and maybe give me some advices later. 

After reading some PDFs by Ruben Puentedura and about my own experience as a student and teacher, I may say that a good game should have: A purpose set with a variety of challenges along the different levels to make the gaming experience powerful and significant. Rewards to motivate and cheer players to attain the goal. A solid sense of difficult, not too easy not too hard. Nowadays the benefits that games offer to education are huge if we put the right scenery according to our learning and teaching objectives because games develop critical thinking, strengthen strategies skills and cooperation. So if games make learning process more enjoyable, let's try them now!

What I love about this type of games is the different weapons or power-uos which appeared along the way such as: guns, swords, even a jeep! If I as an adult love this, I am absolutely sure that kids will love it even more. What it is also engaging is how the game creator can design the scenery with blocks, walls, bricks, etc. I am going to make one game with the platformer maker for sure.

Honestly I did not like this types of games at all! For me it is very frustrating trying to shoot all those big spiders or move my robot in a path that I do not know. I do not think I will use this game maker in the future and to make things worst I did not win in any of the two games presented by the teacher even if I tried  many times =(

What I love about this game maker is the critical thinking involved I mean students actually should think how make the character jumps correctly to get to the next spot and finish the level. Besides, the obstacles that I had to overcome made my playing experience challenging and enjoyable! I definetly will create a game like the ones the teacher suggested to play, I like the most "Waffle's revenge" for the mission and story in it.

I like the challenge involved in this type of game. The idea of accomplish a mission by killing monsters is very appealing for kids and teenagers. Between the two games presented, I like the most "Help your father" because there are more enemies along the halls, electricity to pass doors and when the hero kills a monster, it becomes in coins. I would like to create a game like this soon as well. 

Play Game Make a Free Flash Game

SIM CITY Build your own city is not only challenging but gives you a great satisfaction when you feel like an engineer or a mayor. Being aware about the basic services and green areas to take into consideration while building it, makes you reflect about how you want your city look like at the end. I like it but it takes time and dedication.  OTHER GAMES From the other games offered I liked POKER. You can bet without losing any money. You consider strategies and ambitiuos. Maybe these type of games develop our seek of success skill in our students. ZORK This narrative game makes you think a lot and reflect about how the story develops to get to the next mission. It was stressful since I have to type many times to enter a correct command but I could move on and the happiness just invaded me... hehehe SHOOT'EM UPS When I first played  GALAGON 2004  I could not obtain a decent score so I refreshed the webpage and tried again. At the end...

Playing Oregon Trail was kind of frustrating for me because I do not know the Missouri history so well but this type of game promotes critical thinking and reflection in students. Read that it was considered one of the games someone needs to play before die means that is a great sucess. Maybe one day I will create one about Ecuador's history =) Below the link of the game I found and believe is interesting. It is inspired in Pac-mac but with maths goals. RANDO MATH

Alfonso Gonzalez  is an educator who gamified his science lessons by using Star Trek theme.  Giving students the opportunity to obtain badges and awards along his learning process not only motivates them but also let them learn in a fun way. Gamification does not mean that our lessons are not serious, it is an enjoyable manner to have students hooked on what they learn and develops their tenacity, too. I have to say that see how he transformed his syllabus into a Star Trek adventure was really impressive because it is a huge challenge to adapt the whole curriculum but great teachers do great things and then is when we can inspire students to learn more by themselves. So, BRAVO for Mr. G!

After learning a little bit about the variety of game making tools, I can say that I want to use GameMaker studio and PlayCanvas. GameMaker has 2D graphics, the cheapest Pro version and does not require programming. On the other hand, PlayCanvas has a more appealing graphic design (3D) but unfortunatly for me it needs programming.  To be honest, I would love to learn programming to make awesome games as the ones in their webpages as examples. There are others good engines such as Construct 2 and Unity which could be a great tool too. 

The features that I love about this type of game are: Scenery: there are many kinds of ground, waterfalls, plants, rocks, etc. to personalise your game as you wish. Enemies: there are different types of monsters along the way. Each one with a specific skill that our avatar should defeat. Rewards: we can choose from coins until food to help our avatar in the variety of levels. Music: nothing better to listen the effects when our avatar jumps, hehehe Even if I really enjoy playing arcade, I would like to have the option to put questions as a creator to give my students the chance of reflect more if I want to use it as a serious game.

Video games are a great source of engagement in terms of liking and wanting since they challenge people, in our case as educators students, to pursue a goal. What makes this game based learning experience appealing for users are first the element of uncertainty to win and the continuous rewards, prizes and extra points that they can obtain by working collaboratively or individually. Even though in the past teachers believed games are a waste a time, I firmly think that they are an innovating way to let students learn by themselves and with their own pace which makes learning fun and attractive for them. Therefore, based on the above when designing games with educational purposes what becomes a challenge is to keep students motivated and finish the tasks along the way. To achieve this, create proper activities with long or short-terms aims are a key I mean they should not be so easy or so difficult to attain. Secondly, people love to know what their progress are due to our comp...

Games by generation TENNIS FOR TWO 1958 PONG 1972 GOTCHA 1973 INDY 4 1976 BOOT HILL 1977 CAR POLO 1977 SPACE WARS 1977 SPACE INVADERS 1978 FIRE TRUCK 1978 GALAXIAN 1979 ASTEROIDS 1979 SUPER SPEED RACE 1979 RADAR SCOPE 1979 PAC-MAN 1980 DEFENDER 1980 TURBO 1981 DONKEY KONG 1981 QUANTUM 1982 DIG DUG 1982 XEVIOUS 1982 ZAXXON 1982 DRAGON'S LAIR 1983 HANG-ON 1985 SPACE HARRIER 1985 SUPER MARIO BROS 1985 OUT RUN 1986 ALTERED BEAST 1989 In the list above some games have black and white display and other full-colour graphics. There are 2 ways to draw on screen: raster and vector. I used to play pac-man and super mario bros when I was a kid. I remember spending many hours trying to win them alone in my bedroom eating lots of snacks and to be honest those were great times! But my mom was always very angry because she thought I was wasting my time. Maybe at that time, nobody at home and even myself did not notice that playing video games was a w...

Humberto tells us about parents' opinions regarding video games which most of the time for them it is a waste of time.  But, in fact, gaming gives us a different perspective of how life should be since we have to attain long-term goals, focus on completing missions, collaborate with others, build patience and tenacity to pass to the next level and the most important since my viewpoint, learn that sometimes we cannot have everything we want but what we need. So, if games have this inherent appealing feature and we as educators take this as an advantage to develop more attractive classes, maybe we can also motivate our students to be better human beings through games. Below the video =)

As Paul Andersen says at the end of his intervention in TED, we learn from failure. To succeed in every task does not give us significant knowledge or experience, in fact, it is from failure where we become strong and solve difficult problems along the way. Sadly some parents as he mentioned just focus on scores but not on th effort that their kid put to accomplish a goal. Now games give us, as teachers, the opportunity to motivate our students since it is fun and enjoyable. If we gamifie our lessons with rewards, missions, quests and more; for sure our students will see learning process as something appealing and will not notice they are actually learning. My viewpoint now is that games are a powerful tool that we need to explote and make it part of out methodology to help kids, teenagers and even adults to learn better. Below the video, enjoy!