For my final project in Computer Authoring, I wanted to create a game that I could potentially use in my middle school ELA/SS classroom. I figured that US History would be a better choice as the answers are more direct, and there is no mistaking the true answer unlike Language Arts when the answer can be ambiguous or have several answers that qualify as correct. It makes for an easier structure. Here is a log with links to help you see what the process looked like. Check out the game here: http://historyquiz.herokuapp.com/
April 17th, 2016
- Brainstormed games with husband (Steve Ottenad partner in company we built MyExitSlips together)
- He has a collection of Jeopardy questions on Jservice.io that we thought would be a great place to start for a fun game that is also educational and especially for my ELA/SS classes.
- Decided on American History as the category as there is a large repository of questions.
- It is searchable, and there are hundreds of questions relating to American History.
- Dynamics of the game?
- I showed Steve the thought process behind Kahoot, and he loved it, so we started from there.
- There is a game on JackBox that is called Fibbage that we love so we thought we would try to do something like that
- It is also somewhat like the game Balderdash which I have played since I was little and loved!
- In these games, it is okay to get it wrong at first because sometimes that comes off as tricky or purposeful.
- If you convince other people of your answer, you get points for their buying into your idea.
- Balderdash game theory The game begins by all players rolling a die, with the high roll chosen to be the first “dasher”. The dasher draws a “definition card” from the supplied box, and rolls the dice to decide which of the words listed there is to be used. Then the dasher writes the definition of the word (as supplied on the card) on a piece of paper. All other players then write down a definition, which may be an honest attempt to provide the correct definition, or, if they do not know or for tactical reasons decide not to, a fictitious definition for the word designed to sound convincing.
- The players hand their definitions to the dasher. Players submitting the correct definition are immediately given three points, and, if there is more than one, the round is abandoned (though the points are retained). The definitions, including the real definition, are then read out in random order. Players record which answers they believe is correct. Players are awarded two points if they guess the correct definition. Players are awarded one point for each other player who incorrectly chooses the fake definition they wrote. The dasher is awarded three points if no one guesses the correct definition. Players move their tokens around the game board one square for each point awarded. The role of dasher then passes to another player. The winner is the individual whose token reaches the end square first.
- Multiple choice, all answer, only some answer?
- We discussed the options and then Steve told me what would work best with the coding platform.
- I wanted something where the students could be in teams
- Teams allow for equitable access to all students.
- If I make purposeful teams, then no student will be left behind because there will be someone in the collaborative group who can help out.
- They have some time to answer the question. How much time?
- ~ 1 minute and as a team they come up with a reply to type into the game.
- Everyone’s answers d on the board and as a whole class, they decide on which is the correct answer.
- Then those that choose the right answer to get the points.
- Need a pin to get into the class?
- How do I control the groups?
- I showed Steve the thought process behind Kahoot, and he loved it, so we started from there.
- He has a collection of Jeopardy questions on Jservice.io that we thought would be a great place to start for a fun game that is also educational and especially for my ELA/SS classes.
- I did some research and decided Socket.io is the best real time option for the framework. Steve gave me a few to look at and decide.
- Real-time communication framework allowing for multi-user applications
- Cyclical question and response framework like chat.
- Hacking it/Working it with Jservice and the category that we want to pull from “American History” 100 questions.
- Cloned Hello World Chat Application to local environment by using git
- Created a local chat application
- Used Open Bracket for code editor
- In 17 lines of Javascript and HTML, he created a chat application using Socket.io
- I pulled in the Jservice database for the question category.
- Building basic UI to get the correct category from the very large database of https://github.com/sottenad
- Gets to 38 lines of code and makes it so that when you click the button get started it tells you the category “American History” and the number of questions that will be served up from that category.
- This part was a
- Deploying American History Quiz Game on Heroku
- Uses git in the command line or a GUI tool to deploy this app.
- Create a Git Repository and deploy application to test the real-time application http://historyquiz.herokuapp.com
- Used in a small setting in my classroom with some issues.
- It would be easier if different periods had different rooms to play the game in.
- The questions are very difficult and may need modification.
April 28th, 2016
- The addition of game groups or rooms so that I could control multiple games at once or a game for each period.
- So now they have little identifiers at the end of the URL that I would give to my students. http://historyquiz.herokuapp.com/game/LMJUX the LMJUX would be that period’s game identification.
- So now they have little identifiers at the end of the URL that I would give to my students. http://historyquiz.herokuapp.com/game/LMJUX the LMJUX would be that period’s game identification.
- The game questions needed modification.
- We disabled the link between JService and I went ahead and created a set of questions catered to my 7th-grade students.
- These all correlate to a unit on American History that we did in Nov/Dec of this year.
- The quiz would be taken open note and textbook so that the students could have a chance to get the correct answer. USHistoryQAforQuiz
May 22nd, 2016
- Had some time to test out the game with a small subset of students in my PACE class (homeroom/advisory)
- It was easy enough for them to use but the points system was difficult to make them understand.
- I ended up having to create a point system myself.
- I also had to give a lot more instructions verbally then I would want to if I were to let someone else use this game.
