First Person Shooter

I am in the development stages of writing the assessment for my year 12 programming course. The course so far is looking at the development and design of games using the software gamemaker, this software is a GUI with GML if you are inclined to write your own programming. I found a really good book to go with it as well, The Gamemakers Apprentice. This has easy to work through exercises for the students and gets them developing some interesting and worthwhile games. Each lesson is then put on the knowedgeNET (LMS) website so the can access it at home and do some homework.

Now why this is labeled First Person Shooter is the fact that I have found a video that was developed by a parent who was concerned about his child's addiction to Counter Strike, a first person shooter game. Now finding the video was one thing, trying to find a legal copy of the video is another. Google Video has the Video here. I am looking at incorporating this into the technology curriculum we have at the moment.

The Technology Curriculum statement is as follows:

Strand C: Technology and Society

Students' technological experiences should reflect the interlinking nature of the strands: technological knowledge and understanding; technological capability; technology and society. When involved in any technological activity, students should adapt and apply knowledge, understandings, and skills from a variety of sources.

Within a range of technological areas and contexts, students should:

7. develop awareness and understanding of the ways the beliefs, values, and ethics of individuals and groups:

- promote or constrain technological development;

- influence attitudes towards technological development;

8. develop awareness and understanding of the impacts of technology on society and the environment:

- in the past, present, and possible future;

- in local, national, and international settings.

Now the one I am looking at is developing awareness and understanding of the impacts of technology on society. So what I am looking at will be something similar to what is below, also included will be some readings for the students to do at home for homework (not something I usually give out, as they complain that they don't have a computer at home.) I may think about getting them to do it as a blog, just got to work on getting the LMS vendor to include a decent blog in their development, and one that teachers can access, maybe multiple subjects/areas? - Something to think about.

Reference material and formative / school assessment tasks:

FIRST PERSON SHOOTER

The teacher will conduct an anonymous survey about video games with the class. If you want to the teacher will give you multiple copies to conduct this survey outside of the class, as part of your own research. You may do this as a group too and combine your results to get a bigger sample.

Questions: Starting points for thinking and discussing the video

1) What positive things does Counter-Strike give to Griffin and his friends?

2) Does violence in video games like Counter-Strike make it more likely for those who play it to resolve problems violently?

Violence in entertainment is an old debate – Plato, Aristotle quote?

3) If you were Griffin’s parent how would you have handled his “obsession” with Counter-Strike?

4) The father (who has written the script of ‘First Person Shooter’) feels at the end that he has fought a battle with his son and lost. Is that the way you see it? Are there other ways to look at it?

5) Is addiction always bad? Can it have a healthy side? Can you think of examples of bad addiction, good addiction and part good, part bad addiction?

6) The video suggests that the game rating system doesn’t work? Do you agree? If so, how serious is this problem and do you have any suggestions as to how it could be overcome?

So that is the development of the work so far. Maybe I should start a wiki for developing more of this stuff.

Now looking at the Achievement Objectives for the technology and society strand,
Technology and Society Level 6

Achievement Objectives

Within a range of technological areas and contexts, students should:

7. identify and assess the factors that affect the ways different groups have responded to, promoted, or inhibited some technological innovation, such as agricultural exports;

8. examine and compare the factors that have influenced, and may affect in the future, the development and impact of some major technological innovations, such as the Internet; data matching.

So I am thinking reading this that is what I am doing Level 6 or should I be doing level 7, I am in the process of trying to find the lovely image of how the strands fit together. Below is the image



I should be aiming for at least Level 6, and possibly Level 7.

Now Level 7 strand in Technology and Society looks at:

Achievement Objectives

Within a range of technological areas and contexts, students should:

7. investigate, assess, and report on the factors that led to changes in attitudes among some identified groups with regard to some technological developments, such as vaccination; bar-codes; microwaves;

8. investigate and debate the perceived social and economic impacts of some specific examples of technological development, such as those associated with military hardware; developments of new drugs.

So looking at that they need to investigate, OK we can do that through the survey and get them to do some analysis of the results.
Also looking at the readings that will take place through the investigate method and get the students to debate on paper not in person the results. Do they think that gaming may provide an addiction, what other habits can come out of it. Now some of the stuff I am looking at is 5 years old, now with research coming out that games are good for students in a educational context I am not to sure.

But looking at the Achievement Objectives levels it does show that the current curriculum is strange and convoluted. But I have to remember that it does bring in many areas of Technology, Biotechnology, Electronics and Control technology, Food technology, Information and Communication technology, Materials technology, Production and Process technology, Structures and Mechanisms.

After reading a conference paper on time4online.org.nz I have also begun to develop some work on Google Documents, that I may be able to link in to knowledgeNET.