Teachers make 3D Games

Teachers make 3D Games

Thanks to some exciting new technology out of Singapore we should be seeing more games in classrooms in the near future.

A recently concluded month long national interschool 3D games for learning competition, for teachers, was organized by Playware Studio and was co-sponsored by Singtel and Microsoft Singapore.

The novel contest required teachers to design and create 3D Games for learning using the 3D Hive rapid game development platform. Participants attended an intensive 3 hour workshop prior to the competition to learn how to use the platform.

Ms Faith Goh from River Valley High School won the grand prize in the inaugural national interschool 3D games for learning design competition. Ms Goh also won the special prize for the best 3D Game for learning (languages category).

The first and second runners up prizes went to Mr. Liu Peng from Canberra primary School and Mr. Zulkifli Mansor from Gongshang Primary School respectively. Other prize winning entries were from teams from Madrasah Al-Arabiah Al-Islamiah, Greenridge Primary School, Tampines Secondary School and Anglican High School.  

Teacher and a Showman

Can Teachers make successful games? Are talented teachers also natural born game designers? Read on to find out how a small team of dedicated developers is challenging conventions and turning the multi-billion dollar serious games industry on its head.

Game development is a huge business with audience counts in millions, huge budgets and large specialized teams. From the Fifa world cup to Angry Birds to Plants and Zombies Game designers are free to work with topics that excite and intrigue their audiences.

Teachers on the other hand usually work with 15 to 30 students on a subject, alone, through a year and have to prepare their own material within the narrow confines of the syllabus prescribed. There is usually no budget to speak of and a lot of performance pressure.

Even though both Game designers and Teachers alike have to go through years of training in their respective fields and require loads of passion, talent and dedication the two professions seem to have little else in common.

Playware Studios a small Singapore based company asserts otherwise.

National 3D Game Design competition

Playware announces the Inaugural  National 3D Game Design competition  for Teachers, co-sponsored by Singtel and Microsoft.

The teams have to use the Esoteric 3D Game creation platform to make engaging games for learning.

Read more about the competition here

Learning in Fun-filled Virtual Dimensions

from Schoolbag.sg 


Tuesday, May 3, 2011


It was a bright morning at Canberra Primary School and a class of Primary 5 pupils were standing in line outside the school's 4Di Lab. Judging from their faces, some were looking forward to savouring the air-conditioned environment but were they in for a surprise!


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Bringing the world into the classroom

by Tan Weizhen


Without leaving the classroom, students at FutureSchool Canberra Primary can visit the rainforest, the Shanghai World Expo or a historical period in Singapore.

All this thanks to a virtual reality lab unveiled yesterday - believed to be the first of its kind in schools here - which is equipped with 14 touch screens and 40 speakers, with adjustable temperature, visual and sound efforts to provide students with a multi-sensory experience in a classroom setting....


Read the full article here 

The Next Generation Train has arrived

by Kenneth James

Picture a series of walls that make up a screen displaying a scene from olden days Singapore. In the scene a junk rocks gently on the Singapore river. People are going about their business on the cobbled street by the river...

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Speech by Mr S Iswaran, Senior Minister of State, Ministry of Trade and Industry & Ministry of Education at MOE ExCEL Fest 2011

extract:

"Today, pupils in Canberra Primary enjoy going on trips back to Singapore in the 1950’s, then on a trip to the Shanghai Expo and even a journey deep into a tropical rainforest, all made possible by 4Di, a virtual immersive learning environment built by the school and industry."

Read the full speech here

“未来学校”计划下 康培小学设四维虚拟教室

康培小学的四维虚拟互动学习室设有14台巨型触屏，还有40个扬声器。一些教师设计了热带雨林的互动场景，学生不仅能看到罕见的动植物，还能听见大自然的声音。一群师生也以上海世博会为灵感制作了学习活动，全校学生都可“游览”上海世博。...


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Schools still not using technology effectively

by Tan Weizhen


SINGAPORE - Three years after the FutureSchools opened their doors and opened a path for other schools to adopt advanced technologies in educating pupils, the trickle-down effect is just beginning.

The test-bed environment at the six FutureSchools - Ngee Ann Secondary and Nan Chiau Primary will soon make it eight - has so far not led to many schools using technology to introduce new and possibly more effective ways of teaching, observers tell MediaCorp....


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Hi-tech Lab makes lesson come alive

by Lei Jiahui

PUPILS of Canberra Primary School can journey into Singapore's past or stride into a lush, tropical rain forest- all without leaving the comfort of your classroom.

Read the full article here or here

Amazon experience for primary pupils

By Amelia Tan



ONE day, the pupils of Canberra Primary may get to experience the smells of the Amazon rainforest - right in school.
But for now, they have access to a room which has walls lined with large LCD touchscreens and speakers that replicate the look and sound of the rainforest.
When they touch icons on the screens, explanations of the characteristics of living things pop up in the form of text, pictures and videos....

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FutureSchools@Singapore

SingTel is leading the consortium that has won the bid to implement the FutureSchools@Singapore project at Canberra Primary School. 

The consortium’s efforts will support the Ministry of Education’s (MOE) Teach Less, Learn More (TLLM) initiative and help to fulfill the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore’s (IDA) Intelligent Nation 2015 (iN2015) master plan to promote ICT in schools and spearhead the transformation of the education sector...

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4DI: Team Playware at the cutting edge

SINGAPORE: A few months from now, students studying in one of the Future Schools in Singapore will walk in without books or other tools. They will enter their learning lab and depending on the subject, the walls around them will digitally project different environments. The elements in these environments will be ‘touch sensitive’ and triggering them will lead deeper into the subject...

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S'pore tech goes to imbX

Officially opened on Tuesday, the imbX (Infocomm Media Business Exchange) 2009 is a platform where ICT companies, their technologies and users meet at the signature CommunicAsia tradeshow.

The annual event comprises a conference and exhibition showfloor. Under the imbX banner, there is also EnterpriseIT, BroadcastAsia and InteractiveDME...

(find PWS mentioned later in the article) 

...Playware Studios Asia's chief creative director Siddharth Jain explains the 4Di (four-dimensional interaction)--a multitouch interactive display surface that will soon be launched in Singapore's Canberra Primary School as part of the FutureSchools program. In a lab, up to 45 students can simultaneously learn in a real-time game setting through 14 wall-sized displays such as the one shown. Another 45 can log into the company's Web-based learning system, and also participate in the same game via avatars....


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4Di: A Futuristic Solution for Canberra Primary

Imagine a classroom that can house any virtual environment. A virtual environment completely immersive and interactive, enabling the teachers to take their students on an interactive journey to the past, present or future. Imagine students interacting with atoms and molecules or space walking studying the planets and stars. Imagine trekking through a large ecosystem interactively learning about the flora and fauna and their complex interdependencies simply by touching...

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