Spore has a video capture function built into it so we just grabbed a heap of video shots of one of the characters and put them together in Movie Maker with his current favourite joke. Too easy!!!

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A few years back after giving a keynote to a rather large group of educators, one of the ‘invited officials’ beckoned me over.

“I like you & I especially like your quote,  ‘Subversion is a major part of innovation and it is our job to subvert’. Come sit by me.”

This conversation has always reminded me of Dorothy Parker’s, ‘If you don’t have anything nice to say, come sit by me.’

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When it comes to Farmville sheep wandering across my Facebook news feeds I’m starting to believe catharsis is so much more fun than rationality

Feel free to send this to anyone who you think needs to see it. hehehehe

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Another of the things I love about machinima is the irreverent humour. Feel free to make humourous suggestions for the dialogue of this comic

Plus, I think I mentioned it before, I love leaving these sorts of things on display in classes for a week and having the students think about what should be added to the language bubbles. Mulling it over for a while tends to produce great results.

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In the coming weeks I’m flying off to Mackay to run a whole day Gifted & Talented workshop on machinima.

I’ve been working on ideas for this workshop for the last few months and am just about to launch an online image bank that will not be blocked by school filters.  (If you know what I mean hehehe).

I’ve already completed a collection of Dawn of War, Second Life and, thanks to JoKay, World of Warcraft images. I anticipate that these collections will go live in the next few days.

Call for Help - If you can help out with PG rated images from your favourite video game feel free to email them to me so anyone can have a go at this type of story telling.

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Over the last few years I have found myself more and more in tune with the concept of  ’slow knowing’. I tend to take a long time to make up my mind about some things. I find I might experiment with an idea for a week and then think about it on and off for a few months and in some cases, even years.

Machinima (machine cinema) is one of those concepts. When @mizminh I were working together in Byron Bay five years ago we started our initial experiments with the genre. We started discussing and exploring the emerging artform with the kids. We also started looking into some of the tools that were around at the time but found our hardware sadly lacking the power to use the software effectively.

In the last month or so I’ve discovered Fraps99. It’s a piece of software that allows you to take screenshots and video captures from within video games. Fraps is free to download and use but if you want added features you can upgrade for a fee. So far I’m very happy with the free version.

So now when Mr 10 and I are playing our latest favourite RTS game we take captures while gaming. When we are finished the game we crop the images in Paint.Net and then drop them into Photostory 3 or Comic Life to see what creative storytelling options we can come up with.

Over lunch yesterday a second year uni student asked me why I’d want to do this ’stuff’ with students. Instantly a heap of half formed ideas came flooding forth…

1. Attitude development – It is worthwhile to tinker. It is worthwhile to experiment with using things in new and different ways. How do we celebrate creativity, innovation and alternate forms of thinking?

2. Forced Creativity – by supplying alternative stimulus different narratives will be created i.e. moving beyond ponies, rainbows and what I did on the weekend

3. Demonstrating how to rise above the defaults of software?

4. Educational outcomes are the floor not the ceiling. Do we really need to continue being apologist when it comes to exploring the possibilities of ICTs?

5. Teaching organisational strategies and problem solving – How can we get more captures to work with? Where can we store these captures so everyone can access them? Many real problems will need to be solved and this is worthwhile.

6. ICTs can be integrated but often the rigid insistence on integration is stifling on so many levels. Insistence on integration often eliminates the possibilities of celebrating advances in technologies.

7. The tools for making the stories are free (or cheap) and the students already have the games at home.

8. Transference of skills – cliche I know, but the software people will use in five years doesn’t exist yet. Activities such as this teach how to view software in new ways & celebrate innovation.

9. Get the students to narrate a video trailer with the voice of that guy that does the cinema previews. They know the guy and they love it. Use a very deep voice and pause in all the wrong places to make the trailer sound like you must see this film.

10. I like the notion of irreverent humour that is often added to machinima films eg narrate the above film from the point of view of forgetting to put out the bin or spacesuits that do not have adequate zippers

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