Good Afternoon.  DO NOW: Get that digital culture bag opened from last class.  Spend the first 30 minutes of class working on it.  

Remember our definition of Culture: attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterize you.

Your image should be a SYMBOL (a thing that represents or stands for something else).  Last class many of you were doing a great job thinking up symbols to represent parts of your culture.  For instance, consider the slides below.  

Last reminder: be careful not to let your slides become "show-and-tell."  This is a thinking assignment.  You should really think deeply about the images and words you choose.  If in doubt, call me over to look at your slide. Also remember, It's VERY IMPORTANT that you use the "notes" section of your powerpoint window to write down how the image symbolizes you and what it tells us about who you are.

Good afternoon!

I hope everyone is feeling great!  Let's get started.

Today I want to review one of the programs you learned pretty well last year.  Powerpoint.  

Powerpoint is a program that allows you to make class and work presentations more interesting and more powerful.  They are not meant to include a ton of text, but instead to be bullet-pointed summaries of the overall presentation you are giving.  

Your Assignment:  DIGITAL CULTURE BAG

1. Create an 8-10 slide powerpoint presentation that tells the class all about you and your "culture" (culture is a wo (100 points)
   
2. Stand up in front of the class and present your powerpoint to everyone (100 points)

Today you will start by watching Mr. Griswold's Digital Culture Bag presentation.

Hey 6th Graders!  Welcome to the assignments page for 5th period Computers. 

You will visit this page every time you come to the computer lab.  I will usually post your assignment here and link to activities and project elements. 

Today I would like you to open that letter you started working on last Monday/Tuesday.  You will find it in the StudentHAR folder of course!

I have already sent you a copy of the letter I wrote to you for you to review.  Finish writing your letter to me in the first 20 minutes of class, or less.  We will add some images together and make sure the formatting looks professional.  

Ready. Set. Go.

You will notice that you have a new project assigned to you today.  This project is going to be graded very carefully to make sure you have met the goals that are laid out in the instructions and the games that you play before starting your game design.

You should start working on this project today, but you should NOT publish it yet.  Once you have had a chance to develop a draft of your games, we will go over what makes a good three-part narrative together.

I have embedded a game below that has great narrative and design.  Of course there are issues with the third level (the system is set up right), but overall this is superb narrative.

Good Afternoon!  This week marks the end of quarter three.  That means rather than give you a new project before your Q3 report card, I am going to give you a "free-day" to work on your Gamestar Mechanic Quest.  At 2:00pm you can head over to Game Alley and review other's games.

Some confusion from monday:

Many of you began asking me questions about the "inventing mechanics" class project towards the end of class on monday.  The main question I was getting asked was "what elements are supposed to be included in the game I design?" 

When you design the game for that project you need to think about designing it around a core mechanic.  If you pick a core mechanic like "racing" you should make sure you have an avatar and enemies that move in a racing style.  You also would want to make sure your layout is platform and there are multiple horizontal screens to race through.  If you pick a core mechanic like "jumping" you should have an avatar and enemies that do a lot of jumping.  You also want to pick a layout that promotes jumping like a vertical platforming game with multiple screens.  

In other words, make sure you really design that game carefully around an action, and make everything within the game work with that action.  

What core mechanic will you pick for your game? Check out this list for ideas:

Racing, collecting, jumping, exploring, avoiding, crashing, diving, walking, talking, falling, flying, teleporting, guessing, solving, running, navigating, eating, competing, saving, battling, etc.

Good afternoon!  There are two new projects assigned in your class projects folder (workshop tab).  They are due in 16 days, however, spring break is next week, so really these two projects are due in just 3.5 class periods.  They each take some time so you should start working on them today.  I have been slowly grading your last two projects.  It's a pretty time-consuming process to grade these things since I have to play and beat each game and give feedback.  Be sure to check your projects pages to see your grades on your projects once I have graded them all.

Okay everyone, Now that those two class projects have ended, it's time to continue our questing.  Please log-in and head to the quest section of your account.  You should definitely be finished with the original quest by now and be working on "Addison Joins the Rogue."  If for some reason you haven't yet finished the original quest, you need to work faster...

Looks like most of you have completely finished the first quest (Addison Joins the League).  Today I would like you all to begin the second quest (Addison Joins the Rogue).  You have the opportunity to earn some pretty neat sprites in the second quest including Power-Up Sprites.  

You should NOT start working on the second quest until you have submitted both class projects to me for evaluation.  This means that you should work on both of the class projects today if you haven't yet finished them.  They are due this week. 

You may use headphones today.