TEAM PAGES

Your challenge is to visit three team pages from other schools. Look over the team page and watch the paper prototype and the vlog. Then make a comment on their pages.

Once you've completed this, return to my page and make some comments about it either on my talk tab or on my board. You could also blog about it and then leave me a comment so I know that's what you did. I look forward to hearing what you have to say.

There are some interesting team pages out there. I hope you find some of them in your search. Don't just comment on the first three that you find. Look around. Good luck. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

Visiting Other Schools and Students' Pages

Please take time to visit other schools and look at their progress. Read their game ideas and look at what they are doing. You can learn from other students. In this learning community, ideas are shared. This is not stealing. On the contrary, we encourage the sharing of ideas and information.

And, you may have ideas that could help other students. So, by all means get out there and make comments and share your ideas and suggestions with other students. You can talk on their "talk pages" and leave your "signature." You can leave a message on their board as well. Make wiki friends. These are students just like you across the state and across the country. It would be nice to broaden your horizons.

At the conclusion of each of your lessons you are assigned a comment, but I encourage you to do more than this, and make more comments. Visit more pages. Get to know the wider Globaloria audience. You will be happy you did!

Let the Competitions Begin

The competitions are beginning for the year. We just completed the first step of the process this week. You made the decision a few weeks ago as to what kind of game you wanted to create and you've been working on the game idea and planning it out with your team members.

In the initial stages, you've created your team roles, assigned tasks, created a paper prototype and made a video of that, and now you are working on drawing a scene. Things are coming together as you work with your team members to work out the details of the scenes in your game.

You are off to a good start and have made it through the first leg of your journey. Keep up the good work. There's a lot of challenges to face, but also many rewarding opportunities. Don't miss any of them!

Drawing a Scene

So I am discovering that most of my class doesn't have a great artistic ability, but you don't have to be a gifted artist to be a game designer. The pen tool is a wonderful asset. It does take some practice, but tracing is a good way to make your objects in the game.

You have some options. None of your symbols or anything in the game can be copied from the internet because of copyright issues. So, you have to create them. You can draw them and scan them and put them into your game. You can use the pen tool and draw them right in the Flash program. You can scan something into Flash and then trace it with the pen tool also. It will take some practice to learn to manipulate it, but you will get good at it after awhile. Some of you will get very good at this.

Just give yourself a little time and space and see what you can create.

Paper Prototypes

Paper prototypes were a challenge to complete this year. Some of the teams had to start over more than once. There were some dead end game ideas. There was a quiz or two. So, we had to revise and remake and make them work. Hopefully, they will be better. Still, the final game will not be the same as the paper prototype, or I haven't seen any of my other teams staying with exactly the same idea.

They will evolve and some may change completely. That's ok. As you work with the game and explore different possibilities, you may uncover more research and ideas that you hadn't even thought of yet. And, that's great. Be creative. I hope that the games will change and improve. Only time will tell. You may surprise yourself!