Making up your own rules isn't as easy as it looks.
Since we don't have to write a reflection, I've decided that I'm going to journal the experience. 06/22/06 13:34PM New assignment. Yep, this one looks really intimidating because there are so many elements to it. Then again... just how many times have I wished I could make up my own rules? Started adding the backgrounds to the copyright and Educational Objectives pages in the tail end of class. I want to do a Storm Chasing game. It will fit Georgia standards S6E3 and S6E4 from the sixth grade science subject matter. Been thinking about it since class... what to do..... what to do..... think I'll call it like it is... STORM CHASER!
06/23/06 8:00AM I spent a lot of time late in the afternoon yesterday fooling around with applying more backgrounds, changing colors, and making up a few questions for class tomorrow. However, early in the evening I myself was sidetracked by storm chasing. It was a great chase... too bad my camera was left at home. I decided to use a photographic background on the main page and several others instead of colors and clip art. Let's face it... the tornadoes and lightning in clip art are pretty lame compared to the real thing, and I think middle school-aged kids would think so too. 06/23/06 11:59AM Today we learned how to set the action buttons and link them to our questions and the corret/incorrect slides. I was confused because the buttons didn't link directly at first, then Craig kindly pointed out that they'd work in the slide show. (another DUH moment to add to my growing collection). We also got links to Bloom's Taxonomy and Applying Bloom's Taxonomy, which give insight into writing different styles of questions and how to use them to the best advantage. Since my game is going to ask students to pull from both basic knowledge and experience, I decided that I'm going to be making up 40 questions instead of 25, and students playing the game will pull one card from each pile when they take turns. There's also going to be a "crapshoot" pile, because part of storm chasing is dealing with the chaos factor of nature. So I'm going to have to make up things for that pile too. It's ok. I have no social life. 06/25/06 5:00PM Well, I've been working on the game a fair portion of the weekend, and keep embroiling myself in more stuff. Coming up with 36 questions and 18 crapshoot scenarios turned out to be more time-consuming than I thought, largely in part to my bad bad keyboarding skills. Must spend more time doing keyboarding drills. I've decided that in the interest of time in the classroom, I'm making the format of the questions part of the game more computerized than cutting-up-small-bits-of-paper-ized. That way, if I were using it in my classroom, I could go back in easily and quickly to change out questions, update them, or add more visuals without running up my classroom materials budget. It would also cut out having to deal so much with lost playing pieces. There are going to be three aspects of the game that will get players to the main goal of reaching their target storm before all the other players. They will have a set of multiple-choice KNOWLEDGE questions which are all related to weather and the hydrologic cycle. The second set of questions is EXPERIENCE, which is answered by players or teams verbally. This set allows for more discussion, listing, reasoning and logical thinking, as well as pulling from classroom and previous outside knowledge. The Knowledge and Experience sets of questions will award one roll of a die for each correct answer.The last set is CRAPSHOOT!, which represents part of any endeavors that involve the study or doing business dependent on nature. Anyone working with the natural world, whether for research, commercial, or personal questing, must learn to expect the unexpected, be flexible, accept and adapt to the situation they're dealt.. good or bad. Crapshoot is only dealt if players land directly on an orange Crapshoot square on the game grid.The Crapshoot scenarios all have variable outcomes. My weather and climate teacher kindly agreed to critique my questions for me, which I appreciated a great deal. We set it up strictly so he'd tell me if the questions were relevent, comprehendible, concise, or needed to be scraped completely and let me go back and figure out how make any needed corrections. I've learned that writing 54 questions takes a long time. Buttons, buttons..... will I ever finish connecting all the buttons??? I have a huge test in my other class tomorrow. This may be my Get Out of Jail Free project. 06/26/06 8:00AM Back in class. Late. I broke out in hives last night between this project and trying to study for the test. I'd say never take benadryl when you have class the next day, but the relief from the itching was enormous, and it's the first full night's sleep I've goten in weeks.Continuing working with the buttons today. Connect, connect connect... I had wanted to add sounds too, but don't think there's going to be time. I should have thought out how much time I needed for the project in relation to how much time I actually had, and planned accordingly. It's too easy to let the project grow too big too fast. My project also may be too big in sheer download size.. hope we can squish it. 06/26-06 9:30PM Managed to get the game board figured out (with some help), and continue to work tonight on connecting the questions to the buttons. Also managed to get a B on the test.. for which I should be grateful, considering the amount of time I actually spent studying for it. 06/27/06 10:50PM Well, life isn't without it's curve balls. Just when I was breathing a sigh of relief that there was light at the end of the tunnel..... feels like a Metallica song to me. Anyway, the buttons are re-connected (imagine my surprise when after an hour of connecting the Knowledge questions to their respective buttons, they somehow all connected back to the same page XP).
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