My school is a 20:20 funded school. This means there has been extra funding to run special projects. I was hoping to get funding from the final last bits of funds.

The initial plan was to get five iMacs and set up a separate classroom for media/video work that could be booked by anyone in the school.

We were also hoping to get Adobe Web suite or Design suite. The idea was that I could teach pupils using industry standard software. This would be incredibly valuable for pupils to have on their CVs.

I was told that there maybe enough funds left for this. Later, howver, was told there wasn't enough for the macs and I would only have £2000 for software.

I went away and thought lots and reseached lots. I found three free animation packages, but all drawing based rather than object based like Flash. I don't think my drawing skills are good enough to rely solely on this and I could see kids being turned off animation if their drawings couldn't match their imagination.

There is also the issue that the SQA Animation unit seems to require Adobe Flash (although it doesn't say so). There isn't anything comparible to Flash. The closest I could find was Toon Boom, but the cost is nearly the same so I'd rather go for Flash. Walter McCrorie at Stevenson did tell me about a really cool Toon Boom feature though: you can import video and then draw on top of it, so you could use live action video to turn your friend into a cartoon!

So, my plan was to get 11 copies of Flash, 11 copies of Microsoft Expression Studio (It's not Adobe Web or Design but it has the advantage of free pupil copies for home use) and 10 Bamboo graphics tablets (to use with the free drawing-based animation software).

I've now been told there's maybe only £700 left in the budget so I can have the graphics tablets but that's it.

I think I'd be better getting as many copies of Flash as possible. The pupils could do more as group work, pulling together video, images and sounds that they source or create. The difficulty is initially teaching the application when sharing computers, however I'm working on discussion with Stevenson College and I probably still know a few of the Telford lecturers from when I taught there. Hopefully I should be able to arrange a day or two based at college for the pupils to learn the application (and while I learn too!)

Judy Robertson from Heriot-Watt University gave a CPD session on Friday. I always like going to HW for meetings. There are ducks and swans there and I get to have lunch with my husband :-)

Here are the notes I made during the session.

Mapping CfE to game making:

Determination to reach high standards - often you will find yourself limiting children's ambitions to achievable targets. Reworking ideas is all part of the creative process.

The are high rewards for low effort at the beginning, but game making isn't simplistic, it stretches pupils skills and creativity.

Resilience is necessary because pupils will have to work and think about their aims in order to get the programming to do what they what.

Peer learning and sharing goes on with pupils as well as teachers collaboration.

CfE Technology Objectives:
TCH2-09a (P7) and TCH3-09a (S1-3)
P7 is just designing, S1-3 is design and implement.
Now not just games but "game, animation or other aplication" which is good.

CfE English Language principles:
"a text is the medium through which ideas, experiences, opinions and information can be communicated"
including "films, games and TV programmes".

We are now all teachers of literacy
As an example of literacy in programming, Judy said her husband once wrote a Prolog poem for her.

Scratch:
Free (big plus point!) and developed by MIT. Kids are learning programing in a really nice way but don't realise. Good teaching resources including 'Scratchcards'. Games can be shared online. It is great for kids to be able to share with kids outside of Scotland. Can change the language easily (eg into Polish)

Gamemaker
Better for older kids. Maybe too difficult for S2.
Free download at yoyogames.com
Excellent textbook and tutorials
http://book.gamemaker.nt/frames.htm

Crayon Physics and Phun
Phun free, Crayon $20. Cross between sketchpads and physics simulations. You can either design levels or play them. OK for a quick lesson on games design but not so good for teaching programing.

Second Life
Free. LTS apparently using OpenSim and integrating it into GLOW.

Adventure Author
Based at HW Uni, supported by EPSRC.
Aims to study the creative process learners go through when making their own computer games.
User-centred design is where users are frequently consulted when developing. Learner-centred design is where teachers and learners are an important part of the development process.
Worked with schools in Edinburgh, Dundee and East Lothian as well as holiday workshops (which are good because it lets kids get absorbed in the process without the bell ringing.
Based on Neverwinter Nights 2 but with free plugins with added educational tools and trickier parts of software removed. Free plugins at www.adventureauthor.org
3D environment which looks good, which is important for motivation.
Fridge Magnets tool is a colour coded design tool.
Conversation Writer tool has a tree branching structure displayed like a play scripts. Conditions possible, for example the first time you meet Cedric Bear he'll tell you a quest. Next time you meet him he'll say something different (depending on whether you've solved the quest)
Comments Card tool has been very successful as a discussion on evaluating the game.
My Tasks tool is a check list tool

Campie Primary School teacher has a blog about the experience. (I missed the link for this though)

We then got a demonstration of how to use Adventure Author and we were then able to try it out ourselves.

Another option suggested was RPG Maker 3000 which is free and doesn't need as powerful graphics card.

There are opportunities for using NWN2 in more depths. The programming is hidden by Adventure Author but can be shown to advanced students.

Suggestions of how to approach teaching Adventure Author:
Let kids "explore the sweety shop until they get sick"! The pupils will learn from just exploring.

Machinima movies are also possible using screen capture.

Judith at St. Augustine's described the difficulties of using this with classes - six weeks of a 50 minute lesson a week can make pupils very frustrated.

Heriot Watt are looking for teachers and schools to be involved in their Making Games In Schools project. The first training session will possibly be in September then a second cohort in November. The training is for 2.5 days at HW. They are ideally looking for two teachers per school, although this would be best to be different subjects. There is a small budget to help with hardware costs.

I haven't been blogging for a while. It's mainly because I don't like blogging about negative things.

Today is a negative thing, but maybe someone out there can help.

My annual department for all software, peripherals, textbooks, photocopying, printing costs etc is around £300 - £360. This year had decided I was going to try and spend as much as I could on extra memory for my class computers.

I have 21 computers. 19 of them have only 512Mb of memory. They struggle to run a web browser. There is no way I can run video editing on them for the Digital Media Computing course from June.

The other two computers have 1Gb of RAM. These are replacement machines for a couple that have broken in the last couple of years.

My plan was to buy 1Gb RAM for half of the machines, take out the 512 Mb memory from them and put them into the other half of the machines. This would only cost about £300 to upgrade to 1Gb in the whole class.

I've been told under the existing contract that we are not allowed to open the boxes. I can kinda accept that. It's good business sense to not have your users fiddle with the insides of the machinery.

What is dissappointing is that the cost to 'officially' upgrade would be around £150 per machine and I'd have to upgrade all of them (no juggling memory about). That works out at £2850.

Now I realise that engineer time is involved, but that would surely only be one hour travelling and one hour to slot in the memory (it's not a difficult job, I'm sure all of my 1P1 class would be able to do it if I showed them once)

I also realise that if a computer fails and it is replaced with another machine that uses a different type of memory then they would need to make buy memory of the new type. However this isn't a factor as the replacement machines are coming in with 1Gb as standard.

So it looks like my choices are:

1) Try to sneak an £300 order for memory past the ICT Co-ordinator / Business Manager

2) Upgrade just two computers and see if the kids figure out which ones are faster

3) Get 1P1 to 'accidentally' damage the computers gradually so they get replaced with 1Gb machines. 1P1 would not need training or demonstrations for this!

4) Give up and carry on moaning with other teachers about the state of the computers, the speed of the network or the fact that the sole teacher of Computing doesn't have permission to install software or upgrade patches.

Any ideas? Anyone out there with a spare 10 sticks of DDR 400MHz SDRAM they want to donate to education?!