Summer Fun!

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Well, I haven’t added a post in a while so I thought it was time I got writing again! I had intended to update over the summer but have been so busy I just didn’t get chance!

Therefore I decided to add everything into one big Summer Update and hopefully I’ll then be able to add new posts more frequently.

Cambridge Technicals in IT

Just before the summer holidays I went on a training course with OCR to learn about their new Cambridge Technicals course in IT. We have been teaching OCR Nationals at Level 3 for some time but as this is coming to an end we have had to make a change, Cambridge Technicals seems to be the natural replacement and as a result I’ve been frantically putting resources together over the summer, so far I have only finished Unit 1 but Unit 15 is nearly there and I will be developing a further four units throughout the year. Resources are available from here.

Grade 1 Piano

I had a personal success just before I broke up for the summer holidays. Having sat my Grade 1 piano exam a few weeks earlier I found out I passed with a Distinction! I was so pleased, just need to start working towards Grade 2 next!

Daily Edventures

At the beginning of the summer I was interviewed for the website of Anthony Salcito, vice president of Education for Microsoft. He is a on a year-long journey looking at educators around the world, you can read the interview here.

Olympics

Following my Kodu Olympics project last term I was lucky-enough to get tickets to see the Athletics on the morning of Super Saturday, we watched Usain Bolt  in round 1 of the men’s 100m among others but most impressive was watching the amazing Jessica Ennis on the long jump and javelin. We saw so much in the few hours we were in the stadium and it was simply a wonderful day!

Kodu on Mars

Well on Monday 6th August the Rover landed on Mars and to celebrate this a Mars-themed edition of Kodu Game Lab was released. I managed to find some time during my busy summer to play with the new version and program my very-own Mars Rover, it’s great fun! Since then I have been writing a scheme of work around the Mars-theme. I’ll be uploading into my Key Stage 3 resources area as soon as it is complete.

Kodu Bootcamp in Wales

In August, alongside fellow K-Team member, Ray Chambers, we delivered a two-day Kodu bootcamp with Technocamps for young people aged between 15-18. On the first day we gave the students an overview of how to use Kodu and an understanding of the fundamental skills, much of this was taken from my scheme of work, on the second day they had the opportunity to design and create their own games. We were really impressed with the work they produced. You can download their games from here.

I will be showcasing the work I have done with Kodu in Prague in November at the Microsoft Partners in Learning Global Forum.

 The Remainder of my Summer Holidays

I had a great end to my summer holidays this year, firstly my auntie and uncle from America visited for two weeks, so we went out to lots of nice places in the local area as well as London. For the final week my partner and I went to St Agata (near Sorrento) in Italy, which was very enjoyable, we got to travel up to the top of Mount Vesuvias, visit the ruins of Pompeii and not to mention the beautiful Amalfi Coast and delicious food! It was quite a shock to come straight back to work!

 

Kodu Primary Project in Kent

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I have recently finished running a project with children from a local primary school, using Kodu in a Literacy context. The project lasted nine weeks and after learning the basics of Kodu the children designed and wrote descriptions of their own worlds. They then created these worlds in Kodu. After that they planned which characters they were going to use and wrote a storyline for their games and were  given time to develop these. While doing this they also blogged about the progress they were making, which you can read here. Their games are also available for download on the site.

Myself and the children really enjoyed the experience and the children learnt a great deal, not only skills in Kodu but also with storytelling and blogging in which we focussed on their grammar and spelling. One thing I found particularly surprising was how imaginative the children were, they seemed to find it much easier to come up with ideas for their games than their secondary-school counterparts. They were also very quick to pick up techniques in using Kodu. I am hoping to run this project again with other local primary schools (Thanet area), here is a flyer explaining more details.

I also developed some resources to use throughout the project to aid the design and planning, you can download these resources on the links below:

At the end of the project students were presented with certificates by our head-teacher after he had played each of their games. They found this very exciting!

Kodu Tutorial Videos

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With my inherited title, “Queen of Kodu”, I have begun to develop a series of Kodu tutorial videos. I have created a playlist of these on YouTube which you can find below or by clicking here. I am aiming to continue adding to these as time permits. Hopefully some of you will find them useful. If you have any suggestions of videos you would like to see, please add comments/suggestions below.

Some Finished Kodu Games

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I frequently find myself creating new games in Kodu, either at home or in school to demonstrate key concepts and I often end up leaving my games about 90% complete and don’t often go back to actually finish them off! I had three such games that I had started at various points in the last few months and have now taken the time to actually finish them! I thought I would share them with you, feel free to pick them apart to see how they work, improve upon etc. . .

Here they are:


 Pacman

 5-a-side Football

 Mario Meets Kodu

Gameplay instructions are in the world description of each game. Click on the Kodu icons to download each game.

My Kodu Top 5 Wish List

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I have been pondering recently whether Kodu can get any better. Many of you know I am a HUGE fan of the software and, although I think the software is already pretty awesome, there are a few features I would like to see included at a later date:

  1. Mobile Version – Now I’m not suggesting that we should be able to create Kodu games on mobile phones as I think this could prove tedious and fiddly, however it would be great if there was a game viewer for Windows Phone 7 so you could play the games you’ve made on your mobile phone.
  2. Human Characters – Kodu has a great range of characters available, but I think it could benefit with human-like characters in addition, this would be particularly helpful if my students wish to re-create a specific story (perhaps in English or History lessons). Maybe with the ability to define skin and hair colour and length too. I wouldn’t want too many customisable features, though, as I fear my students would spend too long designing characters before moving onto programming!
  3. Raining Clouds – This is a suggestion that came from one of the primary school children I have been working with. It would be great if the clouds in the world  could actually generate water and for this to fill up the area below.
  4. Programmable Friction – I know you can change the friction of a character or object in the settings but to be able to change this within the programming would be really useful, that way you can define how the character moves depending on the type of flooring on which they are standing.
  5. Ask Tiles – It would be great to have an easy way to ask a question and for the correct answers to be stored. I envisage this working a little like the “Say” tiles currently do, except with an extra box where you can store possible answers to the question, along with which one is correct. This could possibly allow up to four different answers (A, B, X and Y). I made a question and answer project a little while ago, and having a built-in way of doing this would be a great asset in education, allowing children to easily make a quiz game on any topic they like.

If you have any other suggestions of future enhancements to Kodu, please post ideas in the comments below!