Games In Education - Students As Game Designers

Your Name and Title:                                      

Dorian Love, English & ICT Teacher

School, Library, or Organization Name:          

Roedean School (South Africa)

Co-Presenter Name(s):                         

N/A

Area of the World from Which You Will Present:         

South Africa

Language in Which You Will Present:             

English

Target Audience(s):                                         

Teachers at all levels

Short Session Description (one line):              

Creating Flash Games - Can Game Creation become a powerful tool in Classroom 2.0?

Full Session Description (as long as you would like):

Can Game Creation be used to encourage students to create their own course content and learn through authoring their own applications?

A Case Study: I got my Grade 10 Computer Literacy Class (all girls) to create their own educational games using Flash and some basic action script. None of the students had used action script before, although they had used Flash to create animations. Most of the groups created drag and drop or button behavior edutainment applications, but some were more ambitious and used tutorials online to learn new skills. All the games had obvious entrepreneurial or pedagogical applications.

The students then staged a Games Day, and we got some outside experts to come and judge the games and give out some prizes.