The Danger of a Single Story

Having a single story means that we make snap judgments about people and places based on very little information.  We forget that individuals are unique and have their own story; we try to fit them into a stereotype.

I think we see this when people refer to West Virginians as rednecks or hillbillies without trying to get to know the history or beauty of the state or the richness of the people here.

I think people can learn a lot from a game, so a game could definitely help players to experience more than one story about a culture---as long as the game developers guard against portraying stereotypes and try to honestly depict the subject.

What are we doing today?

We are learning to create a blog and write a new post.  After that, we will comment on each other's and embed our links.

Game Ingredients and Final Hidden Object Game

I think this is a great project.  I am not happy with my game right now because I got caught up in a coding disaster, but I learned a lot and remembered a lot because of this project.  I think this will help keep the students more focused on learning some of the ins and outs of Flash.

Adding Hidden Objects

I think the process of adding hidden objects is pretty easy; it just takes some organization.  I think I need to spend some time just playing with Flash because I'm not happy with my background still.  I know that comes from just not being comfortable with the drawing part of it.

Make Paper Prototype Part 1/Draw Background

Making my paper prototype wasn't too hard, but I did keep it simple.  Drawing the background in Flash, however, was quite a challenge.  I had forgotten how frustrating it can be!  It is really nice, though, to complete something like that and realize that I know how to do it.

Choose Learning Topic/Plan Game Scene

I chose to do my Hidden Object game on fallacies of logic because that is a topic that I have to brush up on each year before teaching and it's also something my students need a lot of practice with.  I see this game being set in a courtroom or newspaper office with decoy objects such as chairs, tables, plants, etc.  I'm not sure if this is exciting, but it is relevant to my content.

Playing to Learn 2012

I really like the new format for this year's class, and I feel much less stress about attacking this.  As far as this section, I learned that a hidden object game can be very simplistic and yet still incorporate many game ingredients.  I think this will be a good intro for my students and will help them to see that they can develop a good game on their own.