Tag Archives: Google Apps

Tech Evangelist Encourages Student App Development

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Toby 3Today Mr Wilj Dekkers and Year 6 student Toby Skyped with Hannes Nel from Microsoft New Zealand about a game called “The Adventures of Mr Dot” that Toby had built in Scratch.

It was a great chat aimed to help Toby identify some next steps for his game development and when Hannes asked what his plans for it were, Toby’s answer was simple:

I want it to go on an app store so that it can make lots of money!

Toby’s game is called “The Adventures of Mr Dot” and is based on a traditional platform style game, revolving around moving a “dot” from one side of the screen to the other, progressing past increasingly difficult obstacles.

Toby demonstrates how to play “The Adventures of Mr Dot”

SuperMarioBros

Super Mario Bros screenshot that Hannes likened Toby’s game to.

Hannes, who has assisted in development of apps for Trademe and TVNZ, likened playing the game to the Super Mario Brothers games he played as a child.  He went on to explain to Toby that there are three different stores that his game could theoretically be published to:

  • The Windows Store
  • Apple’s App Store
  • Google’s Play Store

The challenge was going to be migrating the game from Scratch to a platform that could be published to these online app stores. Hannes made the suggestion that using Construct 2 would allow for this and that since most app developers were gaining success through publishing to apps for smart phones, Toby might want to think about allowing a touch interface to control “Mr Dot”.

Mr Dot

A screenshot taken from Toby’s Surface Pro 3 showing some of the coding he has done in Scratch to build his game.

Toby, who has spent significant time over the last month developing his game, was immediately up for the challenge and considering how he could convert the keyboard controls to a touch interface. Other students in the Year 6 class with Mr Dekkers have been informal “beta testers” playing many of the existing levels, finding it a fun and addictive game to play. Toby aims to write 100 levels for the game that would result in significant gameplay.

I’ll keep an eye on the development of this app and hopefully we can see it make it through to completion and publication on the various app stores.

Toby_gear

Microsoft kindly gifted Toby a backpack with some tech gifts to encourage him to keep up the programming (this did not include the Surface Pro 3 which is Toby’s personal device)

Bringing It All Together: The Power Of Embedding Content

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One of the common complaints I hear from teachers in schools where computers/tablets are common place in the classroom is that students are easily distracted when browsing websites they’ve been directed to by the teacher. One way to address this is by where ever possible, choosing content that can be embedded directly into your Learning Management System, which in our case is Moodle.

Prior to the introduction of Moodle at St Andrew’s College in 2012, a number of teaching staff had various blogs, wikis and websites around the internet where students would be directed to find content useful for their learning. One of the initial attractions of Moodle was that it would centralise the sharing of resources for all teachers and students, whilst still providing a convenient launching point to locate relevant content elsewhere on the internet.

Increasingly, however, content can now be embedded from the source provider directly into Moodle meaning students do not need to leave the Learning Management System at all which increases engagement and reduces the chance of distraction by clicking off to other websites.

When sourcing great eLearning content from around the internet, I immediately look to see if it allows sharing through embedding, and where it does I always promote this option to our staff rather than simply linking to an external website from Moodle.

Embedding YouTube

One of the most popular resources to embed into Moodle is YouTube video clips and I created a video tutorial for our staff showing them how to do this:

At St Andrew’s College we have a Staff PD area within our Moodle site, and I’ve embedded all our video tutorials into a section of this site so that our staff can follow along with screencast tutorials like the one above.

Embedding ETV

Another valuable video source is ETV which more of our staff are finding the benefits of:

(I mentioned ETV embedding in this earlier post explaining various Moodle functions too)

Embedding Twitter

I’ve been posting recently about the merits of Twitter for Staff Professional Development and increasingly I’m seeing interesting uses by teachers of Twitter in the classroom. One way to achieve this is to embed a twitter feed directly into Moodle – again, a video tutorial showing how to do this:

Having recently returned from the outstanding EduTech conference in Brisbane, the Twitter hashtag of #eduTECH continues to be very active and remains a good source of links and advice. Embedding this into Moodle, or indeed this blog, is achievable with minimal effort:

Increasingly, more and more content is capable of being shared through embedding which is great news for teachers wanting to make their Learning Management Systems more engaging and interactive. A colleague recently tipped me off to using Wolfram Alpha maths resources that can be embedded into Moodle and I’ve demonstrated this briefly here:

Embedding Wolfram Alpha

There are so many other tools that can be embedded such as FotoBabble, Padlet and not to forget Google Docs / Presentations and Office365 WebApps that also allow for sharing through embedding into Moodle or other Learning Management Systems.

Feel free to share other great online resources that can be embedded in the comments below.

In the end, you want your students focusing on the content you’ve selected for that particular part of a lesson and by embedding the content you’re making it easier for them to access the content and stay on task.