This year I have been gathering maker tools for our school's makerspace. As each new tool has arrived, I have tried them out to prepare for student use! The robots, Ozobots, Makey Makeys and LittleBits have been no trouble for me learn. The one tool that I have struggled to teach myself was Bloxels. I knew roughly how it worked, but I found that I was struggling a bit because I have no gaming experience myself...unless PacMan counts...which reveals a little too much about my age! Happily I knew that I did have experts in gaming! Most of our 3rd - 5th graders are avid gamers, so I called upon a few 5th graders who volunteered to figure out how Bloxels works, teach me and more importantly, teach their fellow students!
Once these students took on the task of learning how to use Bloxels, they LOVE, LOVE, LOVED it! (And frankly they continue to beg me to come back and continue their work/play!) Their background with video games did help them intuitively figure out how to use Bloxels. They learned it quickly and confidently. The best part is that they were creating and designing their own game! I am happy to say that I followed their lead and have now designed my own video game in Bloxels!
We determined after beginning that students would be able to design a game with the free iPad app even if they didn't have the cubes and board. They did, however, like having the cube and board to build their own game avatar/character. I am really excited for these students to share with other students so that gamers and non-gamers alike can share in this experience!
We determined after beginning that students would be able to design a game with the free iPad app even if they didn't have the cubes and board. They did, however, like having the cube and board to build their own game avatar/character. I am really excited for these students to share with other students so that gamers and non-gamers alike can share in this experience!