Meeting Minutes
From DIT Experimental Gaming Group
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Minutes of meeting held 11th June in Kevin St
MLPSI Meeting
Date: 11th June 2008 Time: 10am
Present: Ute Hoefer-Soden, Isabel Martínez, Conor Moloney, Mark Dunne, Odette Gabaudan, Bryan Duggan, María-José González
Apologies: Kevin O’Rourke, Claudia Igbrude, Garret O’Kelly
Minutes Correction to Minutes for Last Meeting Where it says Alma to get in touch with Goethe Institute it should say Ute.
Wiki Matters
Marylin Sandivasci (Italian) needs a password to be able to update WIKI.
It seems that the WIKI doesn’t always work when uploading files.
Cultural Institutes
MJ meeting Julia Piera, director Cervantes Institute, Dublin 18th June in the morning
MJ to organize visit to Italian Cultural Attaché.
Google.docs
It was agreed that all of us will get a gmail account. This will allow us to update the Wordbank Excel Sheets online and to always see the latest update.
ACTION: Mark to send ‘Invites’ to join Gmail.
Games
Mark suggested that the best game to start with would be: Cook it.
In order to proceed MJ and Odette will put Wordbank for FOOD in the Google.docs . Simple words for kitchen utensils and action verbs to be included.
The idea is to have 5 recipes/dishes in the game; 3 of which should be common to all languages and 2 country/language specific.
The following dishes were suggested for all languages:
Burgers and chips Pizza Fish and vegetables
Country/Language Specific (Odette& MJ’s ideas) Suggestions welcome!
French Couscous Coq au vin Tarte Tatin
Italian Panetone Tagliatelli Carbonara Osso Bucco
Spanish Paella Fabada Tortilla Turrón
German Lebkuchen
Mark agreed that it would be possible to have a voice-over or a text bubble with a short script about the dish. This is to be done in English with the cultural words left in the target language.
Language Team sought clarification as to how the game/s could include sentences. According to Mark the easiest way of going about this is to have a choice between 3 ready made sentences one of which is the correct one. Fill in the gaps (1 or 2) in a given sentence is also possible. Reconstructing a sentence from words or chunks appears to be more difficult. Mark to investigate.
Suggestions: Each mini-games to have a particular focus (vocabulary learning, audio, etc)
Visit to Primary School with a prototype of game to be postponed till Week 1 September.
Meetings:
Language Team to meet next Monday June 16th at 9am in Odette&MJ’s office
Bryan Duggan to come back with possible dates for week starting 23rd June
Next meeting with Tanya Flanagan is set for July 2nd at 11am (Room to be confirmed)
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Minutes of meeting held 03 June in DIT Kevin st
In attendance Claudia Igbrude, Conor Moloney, Isabel Martinez, Ute Hoefersoden, Garret O’Kelly, Catherine McAuliffe, Tanya Flanagan, Mark Dunne, Maria-Jose Gonzalez, Odette Gabaudan, Bryan Duggan, Marilin Sandivasci, Kevin O’Rourke
Apologies Alma Conway
1. Conor is now officially on the books so is working 3 days a week on this project. Mark will be onboard fully next Monday. Mark will go through game docs to identify potential issues or items that require clarification. Games will be developed by week 6/7 and work after week 7 will be on integrating the languages.
2. Most game description documents are ready barring the last one – a dedicated cultural game. Visual look will be the same for most games.
3. Requirements documents to be done up and uploaded to wiki to be reviewed by all (Garret/Claudia to organise).
4. Mark and Conor will be meeting to flesh out storyboards based on game description documents, graphics and discussions. Boards will be used for the focus groups/user testing at the school which may be scheduled for June.
5. Language vocabulary word banks are in the process of being filled. Sentences to follow. Italian to be done by Marilin. All word/vocabulary banks to be completed before being handed over to Marilin for translation. Documents should be put into Excel as this makes it easier to import into the database (Kevin to organise)
6. All games will be developed with a view to be localized. Also consideration for inclusion of audio which is to follow. Voices for audio to be child sounding( ala simpsons, etc)
7. Cultural Institutes: Alma-Goethe institute; Maria-Jose- Cervantes; Odette-French. Excepts from minutes of language team meetings to be added to “discussion” page of relevant game.
8. MPLSI to possibly pilot game in Late Jan/Feb/March with schools
9. Irish: Tanya is in discussion with Foras na Gaelige regarding Irish dimension for inclusion in the project.
10. Language Team, Mark, Conor, Claudia meeting next Tuesday to identify/flesh out concepts for further development of vocabulary banks.
Next meeting with MLPSI scheduled for Wednesday 2nd of July 2008 @ 11.00am.
Minutes of meeting held 15th May in DIT Kevin st
Present: Ute, Maria-José, Isabel, Odette
We worked on the game Find your clothes. We identified a number of activities and generated sentences for the game.
1. Suggestions for games at an Easy level: play around with words to identify items of clothing
a) There could be a trampoline with a line of clothes. Audio instructions could be given for the avatar to pick up the right clothes as he jumps up and down.
b) Clothes are hanging off a tree, or are going around a conveyor belt and the avatar is given audio instructions to pick the adequate clothes from it.
c) Dress up a scare crow or a witch by following audio instructions.
2. Suggestions for games at medium level: play around with sentences to find items of clothing
a) Dress avatar. Player sees a mix of sentences describing the avatar, some are correct others not. Player must select sentences that describe avatar appropriately e.g. he’s wearing red shoes. Player is asked to pick out 5 correct sentences out of 20 in order to get through to the next level.
b) Introduce a mismatch of colour and item. The player must pick out the right combination. If the combination is wrong , the player must go back into the maze to find the correct item.
3. Suggestions for game at higher level: mix sentences to find clothing with directions to walk around the castle.
We were wondering whether the game is just a maze or can the player go around the castle into the different rooms?
Minutes of meeting held 8th May in DIT Kevin st
Present: Ute, Alma, Odette
We worked on the game “Complete the Grid – Abacus”. We generated a word bank with antonyms and we expanded the word bank for hobbies.
We identified two levels, one easy and one medium. Both would include similar types of activities but with different levels of difficulties.
Level easy: the words appearing on the screen are limited to one topic area. Players have to match
a) pictures with words
b) words with other words
Level medium: the words appearing on the screen are a random selection from several topic areas. Again, players have to match a) pictures with words
b) words with other words
The pictures should generally be simple everyday objects (clothing, food), nouns related to the weather or colours. The words to be matched could be
a) antonyms e.g. cold / hot
b) articles + nouns e.g. the / sun (all languages concerned use different words for ‘the’)
c) adjective and the related noun e.g. sunny / the sun
d) translations from English to the target language
All bubbles would be the same colour or random colours so as not to provide unnecessary clues by colour coding them. When the right pair is hit, the bubbles could disappear from the grid and be stored with the wise man. They would remain visible to the player.
ACTIONS:
1. Make pictures for the words included in the word bank so far.
2. Re-format word banks into table format to facilitate translation and ease of use
3. Question the relevance of the learning objective which involves recognising common sounds in words. This does not seem to be of relevance for 3 of the languages at this level.
4. The next meeting will develop different activities / levels for the game “Escape from the Dungeon” and the topic “Daily routines” for which we have no word bank as yet.
Minutes of meeting held 2nd May in DIT Kevin st
Present: Ute Hoefersoden, Maria-José González and Odette Gabaudan
We worked on the game ‘Escape from Enchanted Forest’ and identified a number of activities for the weather. Activities are pitched at 2 levels, one of which we named ‘easy’ and the other ‘medium’. The games in both levels are of increasing difficulty as the player progresses through the game.
For the ‘easy’ level, only words will be included in the games. 1. When the player gets to the obstacle, a picture related to a weather word appears. The player has to choose the correct word from a selection of about 5 words which will appear around the obstacle. 2. When the player gets to the obstacle, the player sees a weather picture. The player is given a word in which 2 letters are missing. The player will have to drag the missing letters from a number of letters given on the screen. 3. the player is given an audio prompt i.e. they will hear a word. They must choose the correct word (or picture?) from a selection
In the ‘medium’ level, the player begins to encounter simple sentences. All activitiess below are accompanied by a picture. These are a visual support to help players complete the activity successfully. 1. As the player gets to an obstacle, a sentence appears with a word missing. The 1st letter of the word is given. The player must select the right word from a selection 2. As the player gets to an obstacle, a sentence appears with a word missing. The player must select the right word from a selection 3. As the player gets to an obstacle, a sentence appears with two words missing. The player must select the words from a selection 4. As the player gets to an obstacle, a jumbled up sentence with chunks of language appears (e.g. in spring / leaves / on trees / are / green). The player re-orders the sentence.
We started building up a weather word bank which was uploaded on the wiki : http://seriousgames.ie/mediawiki-1.6.10/index.php/Image:Weather_word_bank.doc I have tried to update the table by completing the French column but I have not succeeded...
ACTIONS: 1. Translate the word bank into the different languages 2. Categorise the word bank according to level of difficulty 3. Work on cultural pieces of information related to the weather to be included at the end of a game.
Minutes by Odette
Minutes of Meeting held April 23rd, Kildare Education Centre
Meeting Kildare Education Centre, Kildare
Date: Wednesday April 23rd 2008.
Present: Kènia Puig i Planella, Pascaline Horan, Gina McQuaid, Catherine McAuliffe, Frédérique Rantz, Brendan Duignan, Aoife Wiston, Tanya Flanagan, Claudia Igbrude, Odette Gabaudan, María-José González.
Claudia Igbrude did a presentation on the games designed for the MLPSI project. We used the information contained in the WIKI to serve as the thread for our discussion. Each game was looked at separately and comments were made as to how the game could be improved. Questions were answered as to how the game could work.
Claudia explained that the idea is to use a series of mini-games to practice vocabulary relating to different scenarios. The idea of using mini-games is to give kids the freedom to choose a particular mini-game and then move on to something else. Mini-games are around 15 minutes in duration and they can be played in any order.
This is a brief resume of the comments made about each mini-game.
Game: Enchanted Forest
The idea of having levels of difficulty: easy/medium appealed to everyone.
It was also agreed that the commentaries on cultural issues should be short and English with the key cultural words in the target language. Everyone agreed that in a different game or part of the game there could be questions relating to the cultural content. It was suggested that the sage character (Conor’s artwork) could be the cultural wizard.
Kildare language team made the comment that perhaps some games could be devised to sensitize students to agreement (gender/number)
‘Los zapatos son …….’ Kids to choose rojas/rojo/rojos/roja
Game: Shower of Letters
The idea for this game was well received. Apart from using the ‘raining letters’ to make up a word the students hear or for which there is a prompt it was also suggested that students could re-construct a sentence.
Another suggestion concerning this game is to use it to stress the different using of capitals in some languages (days of the week are not written with a capital in Spanish)
Prompts to be included in audio and image (students hear the word ‘banana’ and also see an image) so that they can pick up the letters that make up the word. Recipe Game
It should include dishes/recipes for food in different countries or regions.
Game 9
The idea of designing a game that could get the kids traveling the world in x number of stages. They will need to use numbers (distance), words relating to means of transport, words such as city, by the sea, island, mountain, clothes they need. This game could serve as a way of linking to other areas of the curriculum (geography). It is important to highlight regional differences where possible. Also primary school kids are very interested in painters, food and key buildings of the target countries.
The Language Team also suggested other areas of interest to kids of that age group; areas such as: dancing, music, computers, mobile phones, shopping, sports (soccer specially). Sounds Kids enjoy learning how sounds made by animals are referred to in the language and also sounds people made when they sneeze or fall, etc.
Another suggestion was to have a library in the Castle.
Everyone seemed to be in favour of keeping the pet (baby dino?) and to build a game around it with instructions to feed it, put it to bed, bring him places, etc.
Minutes by MJ González
Minutes of Meeting held April 17th, Small Board Room, Kevin St
Present: Kevin O'Rourke, Claudia Igbrude, Garrett, Alma Conway, Isabel Mártinez, Odette Gabaudan, Ute Hoefersoden, María-José Gonzalez
Apologies: Bryan Duggan
Kevin O'Rourke welcomed everyone to the meeting and offered a brief outline of the points in the Agenda. Kevin confirmed that Slav was not able to continue working in the project as his visa application had been refused. Bryan Duggan has arranged for Mark (a Year4 student from the School of Computing) to start work in the project in May
During the meeting we all had a look at the games descriptions available on the WIKI. It was agreed that the presentation of the game description could be improved by using Claudia's latest template. Claudia and María-José agreed to work together to look at some of the games description in more detail. The Language Team agreed to further develop the WORD BANKS and SENTENCE BANSKS for the different scenarios.
Kevin suggested that in order to integrate the cultural dimension in the game an avatar or character could be develop. This character would tell 'cultural secrets'. It was discussed that perhaps these cultural commentaries would be better done in English with the key 'cultural' words (if any) in the target language. The information provided in these cultural snippets could be part of a game at a later stage. In other words students could be asked to provide an answer to a question of a cultural nature.
It was agreed that it would be a good idea to get in touch with the cultural institutes and/or embassies in Ireland to see if they could provide us with any sort of material (images,photos, audio, video)
ACTION
Ute to ask Goethe/German Embassy Odette to ask Alliance/French Embassy María-José to ask Cervantes/Spanish Embassy and also Italian Intituto di Cultura
Language Team to develop 10/15 cultural entries for the game. Topics or cultural aspects that could be included: schools schedules, seasons, festivities, gastronomy, geography,others) Another item on the Agenda was the visit to Kildare Education Centre on Wed April 23rd. Claudia, Odette, Isabel and María-José have agreed to go and meet the language team coordinators. The purpose of the meeting is to exchange ideas with the language coordinators and to offer them a 'preview' of the work to date.
Alma suggested she could ask in the Conservatory if they could provide us with an original piece of music to accompany the game. Kevin closed the meeting by reminding all that the next meeting is on April 30th in Mount St at 2.30pm
During the second part of the meeting Garrett explained the concept of the WIKI and showed us HOW TO EDIT.
These are my notes on it:
To put text in BOLD
Three apostrophes before and after text you would like to see in bold
To put text in ITALICS
Two apostrophes before and after text you want italiced
To create a LEVEL ONE HEADER
Use the = sign before and after text you want to use as a title=
To create a new page
use [[ ]]
Minutes by MJG
Language group minutes of a meeting held on April 4th.
Isabel Martinez, Uta Hoefersoden, Maria-José Gonzales and Odette Gabaudan met on April 4th to explore how culture could be integrated into the language activities. In order to make further progress on our ideas, we felt we needed some clarification both from the technical team and from the project leaders.
Technical questions: How do we get round copyright issues with Internet material (e.g. video snippets found on various TV websites) and Cultural Institutes’ material. Is it possible to integrate Internet links into a CD-Rom?
Questions for project leaders: To what extent should cultural content be present in the language activities? Should culture be integrated into the activities or can it be somehow separate? What kind of cultural content is expected (folklore, traditional customs, festivals, stereotypes, daily customs and habits)? Should cultural components be rather visual or interactive? To what extent can we include Internet links with cultural material? Will most schools be able to access such material? We felt it may be difficult to integrate cultural content into language activities if all language activities are to be similar across languages. How do we integrate culture from a range of countries of the one language (e.g. Spain and Argentina)?
Some suggestions for cultural activities:
Using a calendar with key dates for each country/language, click on a date: some questions could be answered e.g. what do you say on that day? What do you eat? What do you wear? Videos and/or pictures could also be used.
Food could be used to practice times / places / ingredients (e.g. based on a local dish, learners could be asked to pick out the correct items for this dish)
Also it will be difficult to give a taste of the culture though providing pictures of a high street of any city (all stores look the same!). However, other snippets may lend themselves better to this.
Let us know what you think!
MLPSI/DIT Project X Meeting 12 March 2008, 11.00am Small boardroom, DIT Kevin Street
In attendance: MLPSI: Tanya Flanagan, Gina McQuaid. DIT: Bryan Duggan, Viacheslav Filonenko, Noel Fitzpatrick, Odette Gabaudan, María-José González, Ute Hoefer-Soden, Claudia Igbrude, Isabel Martínez, Conor Moloney, Garret O’Kelly, Kevin O’Rourke
Brief minutes
Welcome and introductions
Item Contractual issues The contract for the project was signed by Bryan Duggan and Kevin O’Rourke on behalf of DIT Action KOR to forward to Research Office
Item Game proposal from DIT Bryan Duggan (technical lead) presented the concept of the game as a series of mini-games designed for the target audience by being engaging and fun and offering a variety of situations which both include the original idea of a main street but can also go beyond it. The mini-games will be linked by the theme of a magic castle, which was thought appropriate for the age group: it was stressed that the ‘Mainstreet Europe’ theme can be maintained in a variety of ways. It was subsequently agreed that cultural awareness will get priority in the design of the game; this will be introduced through the use of culturally apt scenarios (e.g. food), visually and aurally, as well as through the inclusion of other media (e.g. video). Action BD/VF/CI/CM to begin producing mini-games for demonstration at next meeting
Item Language curriculum/syllabus issues María-José González (Languages lead) outlined how the School of Languages has been working on producing word-banks and game concepts. Each mini-game will have a series of learning outcomes which will map to the curriculum. Action OG/MJG/UHS/IM
It was agreed that third-party material under copyright (e.g. poetry or songs) should not be used in the project.
The project will aim to cover all 10 topics from the curriculum, either directly or indirectly. A document outlining how the various games map to the curriculum /syllabus will be produced as part of the final product. Action MJG/KOR
Item Model of working As agreed, the working language will be English, and localization will be achieved after the initial gameplan has been developed and agreed. Action All
Item Calendar of development: milestones/deliverables The milestones in the contract were agreed as generally achievable, with a final delivery date of October/November 2008. Slav and Conor will officially begin work on 1 April. The School of languages will meet with the MLPSI in advance of the next meeting. Action MJG/TF
Item Project name Suggestions to be posted on the wiki and voted on in advance of the next meeting Action All. BD to coordinate
Item AOB Bryan Duggan explained that the games will initially be PC-based, and will be adaptable for XBox use. The language wil be present-tense and the aim will be to be gender-neutral as far as possible.
Item Next meeting Tuesday 29 April 2008, 2.00pm. Venue: 14 Upper Mount Street This meeting will be followed by an official launch of the project and reception Action KOR to organize
