ABOUT THE CARDBOARD ARCADES
The Cardboard has been a traditional ritual in our STEAM:Coding class for the last 4 years. It’s a project based learned experience inspired by Caines Arcade. In response to the last post, “Workshop the Work In Progress“, I want to be transparent about our process through the voice of our students, who will describe what the Cardboard Arcade Project is all about, their process, and their successes and challenges.
A DAY IN THE WORKS
As in previous, Cardboard Arcade Sessions, we pretty much stuck to the same instructional design as in the Cardboard Arcade Session 2018 as my goals were to solidify the process for the sake of efficiency, flow, and to better support our student in their learning process. Below is a snapshot of a day of us working on our Cardboard Arcades.
THE CARDBOARD ARCADE FEST
The change that we made to this instructional design was WHEN our students showcase their Cardboard Arcade. In the past, we usually held a Cardboard Arcade Session at lunch. The problem with that is not enough students came by to play our student games. So instead, we used 4th and 5th period and we had teachers who are interested in coming down with their classes sign up and as a result, we had a crowd.
MY REFLECTION
SUCCESSES
Aspects that went really well was the management of this project. Students knew where to place their projects, students had ample time to build, test, and iterate, they got feedback from each other. Procedures and routines were well communicated and well-rehearsed so that students automatically knew what to do in the beginning, middle, and end of class..
CHALLENGES
Before the cardboard arcade, I wanted to try a project out that took more time than I have planned. There were a number of students who questioned that particular project’s relevance to the class even though I explained it. After listening and reading their feedback, it’s a project that I will not be returning back to as I want to keep STEAM: Coding specifically to learning how to make games through programming and to minimally include things like video editing, sound editing, and pixel graphic as they can take up a substantial amount of time and take away from the design and development process.
FURTHER WORK
After looking at the showcase video, many of the group weren’t grabbing the audience to their games. The reason why that happened is because we didn’t workshop each group pitching, advertising, and facilitating their games to their audience. Because of the challenges stated above, we lost time and the rehearsal of the pitches and facilitation was taken out the process.
During the process, there were some students who were not as engaged as the other members in the group and so an accountability pieces that I want to add into group work is using the process of SCRUM so that students are meeting daily, facilitating their own group work process, creating tasks and determining what tasks were completed.
