Producing Media
Final Project
Mobile Games in Education
Games have been a tool for learning since the dawn of time, they bring with them engagement, interaction, and provide a natural avenue for learning on many levels. Some games are intended purely for entertainment, however even they contain learning opportunities if you look closely. More recent games available through mobil apps may be designed to help you engage in and navigate a conference, introduce you to a new environment, or teach you a new concept amongst other things. In education, however, we’ve been slow to embrace games as a primary learning tool. Slowly we are starting to see the power in games, whether it be a gamified classroom, an educational online game, or now with the advent of smart phones and the Web 2.0 games on mobile phones. There is significant power for learning and reinforcing learning through games, for that reason I’ve chosen to create a mobile game for my final project. Where to go from here? Which platform? Which game? And how do I distribute it?
With a plan in place to build a GEO based game either around exposing students and staff to alternate transportation options on campus, or create a history trail of towns long gone in the foothills I was ready to tackle the project as the semester end drew nearer. Then COVID 19 hit… and with it a social distancing order that closed the Boulder campus to all non-essential services. Ah but I had a back up plan, my historical hike through the foothills… until I went on the first hike, twisted my ankle and thinking it just a bad sprain found myself off my left foot for about a month.
An Updated Plan
In the midst of shifting gears in every other aspect of life, why not here as well. I began the hunt for another idea and game interface that I could learn to program and publish in inside of a few short weeks, no tall order while working full time with two classes in the mix.
I spent about a week looking at different platforms, I needed something that was fairly easy to get my feet wet with, but something that had options. BuildBox looked interesting and promising, but it didn’t take me long to realize I would need more time to wrap my head around game programming before I was ready for this one.
I settled on GameSalad and began the quest of building a short game as a first session in learning Norwegian with a focus on immersion. I lived in Norway as a youngster and remember going from not speaking a word to fully conversational within about a month so I know immersion works, I’ thought I’d give it a go. I had also team taught immersive Norwegian with a native speaker at a local elementary school in college, I figured I’d follow the format we used there. The name of the game… would be Norsk 101, after time it will be evident to the learner that the word Norsk is Norwegian and this is the beginning course. With a plan and a platform in mind I headed into learning GameSalad.
Gunnar Teaches Norwegian
I decided to use Gunnar, a little gnome character I had found when doing a project earlier in the year, as my main character. My goal was to create a game the player could drive around the screen with either their finger or the arrow keys on a keyboard to learn to recognize four colors. I figured this was a manageable starting point for a first unit in immersive learning, and manageable from a content perspective as well. Gunnar would bump into a color block, the name of the color would appear on screen and they would hear the spoken word as well. Once they had explored the learning screen they would see four “quiz” like screens that would ask them visually and audibly to look for a specific color. When they found it the color block would change to a shape, setting the stage for shapes to become the content for the next game, grow in size and spin off the screen before moving Gunnar to the next game scene. I’d played a piece by Edvard Grieg to put music into the background, I chose Grieg since he was a Norwegian composer and at this point there were no royalty or copyright issues to be concerned with since he passed away in 1907.
Future games will use the same format and colored shaped to teach the words for the shapes while reviewing the colors. The third lesson finds the shapes transforming to animals while reviewing the colors and shapes.
GameSalad
I found GameSalad both easy and a bit complex to use, although that may sound like a contradiction in itself I think most of my struggles were not ever having programmed a game like this before. A character moving on screen with music and spoken audio proved to be a challenge at first. There are only four elements but they pack a punch when it comes to options and programming. There are a number of YouTube videos and GameSalad has a set of tutorials, as well as a “cookbook” with written guides, however many of the YouTube videos reference older versions of the game. There are a step by steps for getting started that you can use to wrap your head around scenes, actor’s, media, and behaviors however I needed a combination of part of one thing over in one video to combine with this thing over there in another so I was bouncing around quite a bit.
Thankfully their help desk, available via chat, is VERY helpful and VERY responsive. They even email a copy of the chat conversation so you don’t have to write down, or copy/paste all the technical information or links for use later. I, however, wasn’t aware of this until I went to publish the game and reached out to them. At that point they walked me through the issues I was having and also gave me the answers I needed to update the game in a number of ways that really enhanced it. We worked on publishing options as well, and that is quite a complex process in itself! For this project I chose to publish Gunnar in a format that could be played on an iPad, or iPhone using the GameSalad viewer, however as the project for class comes to a close I am working on publishing on Android and iOS through the Amazon App Developer. Although hoping to have that done I am waiting on turn-around and approval to get those formats launched!
Gunnar on an iPad or iPhone
You will need the GameSalad App viewer to scan the QR code below to play the game. It’s a free app that is easy to find by searching for “GameSalad Viewer”.
- Download the App on your iPad, or iPhone
- Use the camera to scan the QR code below and the game will launch
- The viewer app is used to test the game as well so the message at the bottom of the screen is a bit confusing as it states “GameSalad Creator Not Found”. However if you are playing a game already created you don’t need the Creator, just scan the QR code and the game will launch.
Playing on a PC!
GameSalad has an Arcade where published games can be accessed by players around the world. This is a great place to check out content others have created. I chose to make my game private for now, however you can play it on your computer if you prefer.
- To view all the games in the arcade using this link to the Arcade
- If you’d like to check out this game use the private link below to locate the game. Norsk 101!
Opportunities in Education
Once you have a baseline knowledge of creating games for an APP or computer GameSalad is an easy drag/drop interface where educators or even elementary students can use to program their own games. There are even a few student created tutorials out there that are very good! There’s a one week free trial, however they were very quick to extend my trial period when I was working with them through chat trying to resolve for some of my questions.
They advertise an educator platform and a developer platform, the educator platform pricing seems very reasonable at a significant discount. I did purchase a year long personal license so I could play with it some more, however I wanted to test out publishing to Android and iOS outside of the viewer and on the App stores. Although you can publish the app so the learner can find it on any device, without charge, it is a more complex process and a difference license. With the educator discount on this plan it was still under $150.00 for a year. They have pricing for schools as well although I didn’t look into those programs.
Final Answer…
I could see this being a great tool to teach the beginning concepts of logic, computer programming, use of media, chain of progression, interfacing with digital media, etc. An instructor with a step by step process for students could easily teach them to program a simple game, like this one, then allow students to go create more complex things on their own. I will return to BuildBox to work in their platform as well, although it is more complex I think it is the next step in progression for me as I begin to explore creating online games!
Tools used
- GameSalad Creator for creation and editing of the game on my Dell Computer. They also have a Mac version of the game creator.
- MS Word to create color blocks with & without text
- Translationlookup.com to translate from English to Norwegian for special alphabet characters in color blocks
- Adobe Photoshop CS4 to remove backgrounds from color blocks
- Red Ketchup to convert .png to an icon file
- Online png Tools – to reset pixels to parameters required for publishing to the GameSalad Arcade
- Casio PX130 for recording of background music
- Audacity to record spoken words, sentences, and background music
- Pixabay for OER images or Gunnar and pictures of Norway