The Movies Game

I haven't played it, but what about using the new game The Movies as a classroom teaching tool?

Like The Sims or other types of simulation software, The Movies lets you set up a virtual movie studio and amass an empire. Your virtual folks need to learn how to plan, research new developments, and successfully complete projects. But what I find most interesting are the possibilities of having kids produce machinima films as part of the game. They need to script, design sets, characters, dialogue, etc., etc. Seems like a cheap way to give kids experience at producing animations.

The website even has a free tool that lets you sign up and produce a few scenes ( up to 12 I believe) using set parts that the company has placed online. I signed up, set up a few scenes, played a bit, and then signed off. Within minutes, I received an email from the site saying it was my turn to produce the next scene. An interesting way to collaborate with other classes? Get kids to sign up in groups (all email addresses can be entered at the beginning of the process) and the site tells them when it is their turn to work on the production.

Even the free online tool seems like an interesting way to teach storyboarding, scripting, elements of setting, etc.

technorati tags: machinima, The Movies, teaching

Comments

[Bryan]

There are some IP issues - The Movies owns what you make, basically.