Back in April of 2012, I read Richard Byrne's blog post about the website Sploder. I don't think my students have ever been more excited than when I happened to stumble upon this site.
I knew this would be something that would definitely capture the attention of my Technology Club that I host after school. This group is all 4th and 5th graders that seem to love to play web-based computer games and have an invested interest in learning about how they work.
The day we began this project I simply announced, "No more playing computer games in here, unless you create them on your own." Students were instantly captivated and curious.
"We're going to make our own games like Angry Birds." Now students were really excited.
I instructed students to go to www.sploder.com and sign in to an account. This was probably the most difficult part of the entire process. They had several problems coming up with user names. I told them they could type in my email as the email address, which seemed to work.
Once the students were all logged in, I put a 15 minute tutorial on the projector and they were immediately creating as they watched the video. Since the narrator (an employee of Sploder) talks fast, I would rewind every few minutes. In total, the 15 minute video was probably on for about 45 minutes, which allowed students to make sure they didn't miss anything.
Overall, students had great success with the website and enjoyed it immensely. Upon recognizing this, I came up with the idea to begin a new club: Video Game Creation Club. Stay tuned to this blog for more ideas of how to have students create video games.
No comments:
Post a Comment