This is a summary of GameTrain Learning’s curriculum development activities at the Critical Design and Gaming School (C:\DAGS) at Augustus Hawkins High School in Los Angeles, California. The C:\DAGS school is one of the new Los Angeles Unified School District’s pilot schools.
Minecraft/Machinima English Language Arts Project
In this project, teams of students will use Minecraft to recreate the environment of the story The Most Dangerous Game. Students will use their Minecraft environment to create a short machinima (animated movie) to depict specific scenes in the story.
GameTrain Learning worked with Mr. Miller (English teacher) to design and implement this project.
Process:
- Prior to the project, familiarize students with the game Minecraft by going to http://minecraft.net and showing the intro video.
- Have students Review and sign the Minecraft code of conduct document. Students can add additional codes of conduct to the document if desired.
- Assemble students into teams (recommend teams of three to five).
- Assign each team their specific scene in the story to recreate.
- Have students meet inside Minecraft and find a suitable location for their team’s environment. Assign warp points for each class.
- Have student teams build their assigned scene.
- Storyboarding – have teams create a storyboard of the machinima.
- Filming – have teams use Bandicam to capture video of gameplay in Minecraft.
- Post-Production – have teams use MovieMaker to edit video clips, add title screens, audio/narration, and/or music, and output the finished movie to a file.
Mangahigh Online Math Game
Mangahigh is an online math game website in which teachers can enroll entire classes to play specific math-related games.
GameTrain Learning worked with Mr. Velazquez (math teacher) to have his classes play various Algebra-related games.
Chemistry-Algebra Discovery Mission
In this project, student teams designed an developed a game that covered specific chemistry and algebra standards using the Scratch game development tool.
GameTrain Learning worked with Mr. Santos (game design teacher), Ms. Se (chemistry teacher), and Mr. Velazquez (math teacher) to help plan out the discovery mission project.
ARIS Augmented Reality Game
ARIS is an augmented reality app and platform to play and create mobile games.
GameTrain Learning worked with Mr. Gomez (social studies teacher) to help his students create a location-based game using ARIS.
