Session Information
| Title | Kodu in the Classroom: How the creative problem solving of building games fits into elementary and middle school curricula |
| Presenter(s) | Rachel Schiff, Microsoft FUSE Labs |
| Time | Thursday, October 21, 3:00p-4:00p |
| Location | Ballroom |
| Format | Speaker |
| Description | What started as simply game building in informal classroom settings has grown into a variety of powerful and creative teaching approaches for integrating Kodu Game Lab in the classroom. The promising outcomes data shows initial success - for example, a pilot project in 20 schools in Australia found that 92% of teachers involved agreed that students using Kodu were building new knowledge, demonstrating greater critical thinking skills, and demonstrating greater creativity. The approaches and findings will be highlighted in this talk.
Kodu Game Lab, a visual programming language for creating games, accessible to ages 8 and up, was built as a tool to transform non-programmers into creators, not merely consumers, of highly visual 3D games. After first being released as an XBOX Indie game, Kodu went into tech preview on the PC in January of 2010, and we now have substantial data on how teachers are integrating Kodu into elementary and middle school classroom learning. The most common approach to Kodu in the classroom is to use it as a vehicle for storytelling -- it makes students' stories come alive and engages students who are struggling with traditional approaches to literacy and narrative. It also adds an element of problem solving - figuring out how to map the available objects and language constructs to the plot (e.g. how to make a storm), and how to code and sequence the actions. Another approach is to emphasize the computer science and engineering design aspects of designing, building and testing a game, and the specific object-oriented programming concepts introduced by Kodu - conditional statements, variables (scores), simple state machines. Kodu has also been used in Design classes (with a focus on the world building, rather than game dynamics), and paired with art units developing out the virtual Kodu characters in the real world. Kodu has brought the act of building games into many different curricular areas, enhancing critical and creative thinking and teamwork along with the specific learning objectives of the class. |