Fifth graders had the opportunity to explore building their own video games using a unique, hands-on platform for telling their own stories through use of Bloxels. If you haven't seen Bloxels yet, various colored blocks represent pixels for the game, each colored block with its own power or atribute, like water or land. Since there are six iPads in the library, the class was organized in six teams, with three or four students making up each group. I had set up Bloxel accounts tied to each of the iPads, which happen to all have different colored cases. So, each of the six groups was assigned a color. Their group's task was to explore the Bloxel site, create a character for their game, and begin the design of their first game. Here's how this looked:
It was only an hour class, but every group successfully met the design challenge within about the first half hour. It was exciting to watch the groups settle in and troubleshoot their games - exploring what the various colored blocks could do.