While teaching Web Design to Key Stage 4 students, I’ve spent a lot of time this week with The Jing Project, TechSmith’s new (free, for now) screen capturing software for both Windows and Mac. From their website:

The concept of Jing is the always-ready program that instantly captures and shares images and video…from your computer to anywhere.

I’ve used other screen capturing software to record tutorials to share with students (Adobe Captivate, for instance) but nothing I’ve seen has anything like the ease of use of Jing. It’s so easy to use that I actually recorded tutorials as I demo-ed ideas to students. Here’s a quick run through recording a screencast with Jing:

Jing sits silently in the background, ready to record:

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One of my favourite applications for Mac OS X, Comic Life, has just been released for Windows XP / Vista. Comic Life allows students to create comics, how-tos or picture albums by combining together digital photos with speech and thought bubbles, text, and authentic comic-style layouts and fonts. It’s great fun and almost impossibly easy to use.

Pricing is US$24.95 (about £12.50) for the “Standard” version and $29.95 for a “Deluxe” version with more fonts, templates and styles. There’s a free 30-day trial available for download, so you can test drive it for yourself.

• Comic Life for Windows

Updated - pricing for education is better still:

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MissionMaker, Immersive Education’s amazing game-creation tool has been exercising my imagination a good deal over recent weeks. Last week we hosted and led a NAGTY event to give G&T students an introduction to the software. The feedback from the students was fantastic. In a single-day session, they implemented some really creative ideas in their games. During the Autumn Term, we are running an extended project with the software with a group from Our Lady and St. Chad’s RC School. I’ve also started work on a game in MissionMaker for use during our primary Adventure Game theme day; here’s the current version of the Maths part of the adventure:

• Maths Game (Right-click and “Save As”) - can only be opened from within MissionMaker.

(Later in the year, Immersive are planning to release a free player application which will allow anyone to play MissionMaker games, whether or not they have the game creation tool. You can find some examples of games created by students on this MissionMaker blog from Shropshire Local Authority).

All this means that I’ve been acquainting myself in detail with the joys (and occasional frustrations) of working with the software. MissionMaker is still a beta (development) product at the moment, but the core functionality is implemented beautifully. I have no doubt that the full production release will tidy up and enhance those features that are still a little rough-around-the-edges.

For those of you in schools and centres who have access to the current beta release, here’s a little trick I found!

Adding multiple triggers for an event

During our initial training at the CLC with the team from Immersive we were shown how to add multiple actions to a rule by opening an existing rule from the “My Game” menu and holding down the shift key while clicking on the arrow for another Action to associate it with the same trigger. This can save a huge amount of time and energy.

In the current beta version of MissionMaker there is no direct way to have multiple triggers for an action i.e. rules which say “the player must complete TASK A and TASK B to activate ACTION C”. This sort of rule-making allows the game-creator to implement far more complex and challenging puzzles. There is a scoring mechanism in MissionMaker that can accommodate some of this functionality - i.e. TASK A adds 100 to the score, TASK B adds 100 to the score and ACTION C occurs when the player has 200 points. The problem with this is that the player is completely aware of the progress they are making towards the goal; they see their score rise as the tasks are completed. This is a particular problem for a puzzle which involves positioning objects in trigger volumes, as the player can walk through the trigger volumes (holding the object in front of them) until they see their score increase.

I wondered if there was a work-around that would allow multiple triggers to be implemented in a manner that is completely hidden from the player. Read more

The City Learning Centre is one of a limited number of institutions around the UK who have been given the opportunity by Immersive Education to test drive MissionMaker, Immersive’s forthcoming game-creation software. MissionMaker puts the creation of 3D computer games within reach of educators and students. Sophisticated puzzles and challenges can be devised and linked together within fantastic interactive environments. Games can feature characters who deliver information to the player via text-to-speech technology or speech recorded by the game creator themself. Video and imagery can be integrated into games. The only real limit is the imagination of the game creator.

Educational theorists have argued on whether playing educational games can improve learning in our students. Immersive Education believe that asking children to create games provides a meaningful and engaging educational challenge.

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The City Learning Centre will be offering opportunities to Wolverhampton students based around MissionMaker in the near future.

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There is a considerable "buzz" in the world of software at the moment about a new breed of software applications labelled together as "Open Source". What does this mean?

Traditionally, we have been able to categorise software into 3 main categories:

1. Commercial software like Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, Macromedia Dreamweaver etc.

2. Shareware applications like WinZip, which you can legally download from the Internet and install, and even redistribute (i.e. give a copy to your friend), but which, if you continue to use, you should pay for. In some cases, the software is restricted in some way until you pay, in others it may annoy you with "reminders" to purchase.

3. Freeware applications which are genuinely free.

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