Workshop C

New digital tools for designing educational and building games
Michael Smith-Welch
Media Lab
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

1:30-5:30
311 ITLC (3/F)

For registration, click here

Using Kar2ouche (an animation software) to create Shakespearean play production

• Mr Neil Maxwell
  St Paul's Convent School
  Session 1 (1:30-2:30)
  CAL Lab (3/F)

• Mr Leon Hill
  St Paul's Convent School
  Session 2 (1:30-2:30)
  Microteaching Room (6/F)

A virtual school of English:

- English Builder
- English-4-Us

Mr Clement Chung, Mr Andrew Lai and Ms L Yim
St Paul's Convent School

1:30-4:30
Classroom of the Future (7/F)

This workshop will address the role that computers can play in design-based learning and will focus on technologies that allow learners to be producers -- not simply consumers -- of new media. The majority of the workshop will be dedicated to introducing a new programming environment called Scratch, an application that allows young people (ages 8-18) to create their own animated stories, video games, and interactive art -- and share their creations with one another across the Internet. To create Scratch programs, kids snap together graphical building blocks, each representing a different command or action. Kids learn important computational ideas as they transform images, mix in sound clips and program dynamic creations. Scratch helps children of all ages develop technological fluency, while supporting mathematical understanding and creative problem solving. Workshop participants will have time to develop their own projects using this new software.

The National Science Foundation(NSF)-funded Scratch project is a collaboration between the Lifelong Kindergarten research group at the MIT Media Lab and the KIDS research group at the UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. Scratch will be released to the general public at the end of Summer 2006.

This workshop will introduce students to the world of Shakespeare and how to create their own short version of scenes from a Shakespearean play by posing the characters, and adding their own text and sound effects or music.

This workshop will introduce two online platforms for studying English language:

English Builder is a two-level English
e-learning platform which aims at enhancing students' vocabulary, speaking and listening comprehension.

English-4-Us is an effective online English platform featuring a library of numerous English grammar exercises. On any computer at home or at school, students may log on and complete multiple choice practice exercises on items like phrasal verbs, tenses, conditional sentences, prepositions, articles, etc. Teachers can easily monitor students' scores and progress by logging on as administrators. This platform not only provides a rich source of questions, it's also fun and easy to use for both students and teachers alike.