What Is Your Passion?

Playing online games, going sailing, camping over-night, exploring enigma, intelligence profiling... These are some of the activities in this year's Special Interest Groups - SIGs.

SIGs were planned last year to bring together students and teachers with similar interests to talk about college life and learning, provide support when needed - and have fun in things they are passionate about. Over 200 students enrolled in SIGs such as Outdoor Adventures, Cafe Culture, Games & Gaming and EMAPP.

Hannah Papworth, a student in the Outdoor Adventures SIG describes one of their first outings:

On the 15th of March 2007 a small yet enthusiastic group from the outdoors special interest group set off on their first activity for the year. A surf and overnight camp at Vin's property on Clifton beach. The group left at 2.45 pronto on Thursday afternoon, reaching Clifton at about twenty past three. Vin showed everyone around his 'beautiful' bush property.

Tents were then set up and a nice hot fire in a tin drum stoked. It started to rain lightly and Vin exclaimed "raincoats or wetsuits” the answer was unanimous “WETSUITS”. We hit the water at around five o'clock and. Conditions were on shore and messy. However the surf was big and powerful and proved to be heaps of fun. There was even a pro Cult surfer among the crowd who had taken to the bank.

It was a nice spontaneous way to break up the school week and when we arrived back at school on Friday morning everyone was pumped and ready for the day ahead. We hope to have more along on our next adventure! The main aim of the outdoors special interest group is to expand horizons, spend time with fellow students and make 2007 as memorable a year as possible and work out where we are heading in the future.

Teacher Donna Brown has been challenging her Environment Group (and their parents!) with passionate objects and energy audits of their homes. Donna is sharing news with the parents of her group through a newsletter - and has received very positive feedback.

“I wanted to pursue the notion of passion. I asked the students to bring an object in that represented something that they were passionate about and to share it with the group. By holding it in our hands and expressing our feelings, we build the connection of heart and hand.”

Donna describes how they drew pictures of their passion. “Silly pictures really, but very meaningful.” She then invited parents at Parent/Teacher Evening to share what they were doing in their lives that they felt passionate about - and what passions they believed their sons and daughters had... a great conversation!

The Games & Gaming SIG play and talk about games over raison toast every fortnight. They have had a visit from a Melbourne games programmer who gave insights into the games industry in Australia and around the world. You can read about all this on their online journal.

The EMMAP SIG have also been very busy - sailing, exercising... and talking about the Great Pyramid - organised by teachers Dawn, Heather, Janet and Richard. Why the Great Pyramid? To challenge each person's assumptions about what they think they know. As students gain knowledge through their years of life and education it is also important for them to question their often taken-for-granted worldviews. A presentation on the Great Pyramid aimed to do just that.

These are just a few examples of what is happening in SIGs - more later

Games Programmer Visits Games & Gaming SIG

Melbourne Games Programmer Sam Sauvage had plenty of expert advice for would-be games developers today.

Sam, from IR Gurus Australia’s leading multi-platform game development studio, visited the Games & Gaming SIG - and stayed on for the Games Programming C class.

Sam talked about career pathways for game developers such as:

• University Maths and Computing - particularly C++ and maths of polygons
• Academy of Interactive Entertainment - a one year course (Melbourne) almost guaranteeing employment in the industry - probably at IR Gurus
• Getting together a young multi-skilled team of passionate gamers

All options led to jobs in a very hardworking industry which Sam describes as becoming a lot like the film industry where teams of 50-100 people covering a wide range of skills work on multi-million dollar projects with tight deadlines.

Sam described the difference between developing games for PCs and consoles and talked about the huge demand for games programmers working on PlayStation 3 titles. He showed some sites related to games developed by IR Gurus and the games industry in general:

• AFL Premiership 2006
  
• Heroes of the Pacific
  
• Heatseeker
  
• Game Developers of Australia
  
• Krome Studios
  
• Assembly - for Demo writers
  

Game demos and modding were also good areas for students to get involved in because you learn basic skills and terminology for the industry.

Sam stayed and chatted with the Games Programming class and looked at some of the flash and GameMaker work being done. He hopes to come back - possibly to work with students on projects.

Thanks Sam - your time was greatly appreciated!

Games on Toast

Delicious wafts of raisin toast filled the air in the Games & gaming SIG this morning - so did some smoke when one piece was cooked twice... fortunately the smoke alarms were not triggered and we didn't send the whole building out into the rain

After a slow start due to blocked roads we went through 3 loaves of toast.

A gamers SIG Community has been set up on the HC Social Learning Network and several people joined up.

Members can post to the blog about the SIG or their gaming experiences or comment on existing posts.

The Games and Gaming Special Interest Group (SIG) had a great started yesterday with 26 students hearing about Roger Stack's adventures in Second Life and Bernie's experience with WoW and The Lord of the Rings - The Battle for Middle Earth.

Roger talked about the 4.1 million users in Second Life (SL) and how hundreds of thousands of $$$ of real money change hands each day. A few people make their real life living in SL! He bought a property in Eldora some months ago - it's above the snowline - and he has built a gallery for some of his wife's art. That's his avatar on the left with the gallery behind him...

He's exploring the educational potential of SL - some believe that in the near future as bandwidth rapidly increases online interations will more often take place with avatars in 3D environments rather than just the text of chat or email. Many universities have already established annexes in SL.

More and more designers are using immersive worlds like these to try out their ideas... walking around, in and even through them. Recently the Half-Life game engine has been used to create a walk-through of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater.

Over the last year UNICEF has been hosting Global Kids in Second Life - teenagers from around the planet looking at local and global issues - see video clips.

After Second Life Bernie did an excellent presentation talking about WoW and Battle for Middle Earth - while showing off his new laptop

Here is his Middle Earth character Thrugg. Bernie took us on a bit of a tour demonstrating some of the features that makes this game one of his favourites at the moment.

Special Interest Groups - SIGs

In 2007 we are offering students the option of joining Special Interest Groups (SIGs) that are tied to our normal mentor/counselling groups.

In the past all students were timetabled to attend a mentor/counselling group for 30 mins once a week with a teacher. In 2006 one of these groups was based on a student interest so that rather than students having a common teacher or subject they have a common interest. It has worked very well with much better attendance and enthusiastic participation.

Several groups of teachers have now decided to offer a range of Special Interest Groups for 2007. The idea is that two or more teachers will combine their mentor/counselling groups to form a larger group that is facilitiated by a team of teachers. Students are curently nominating a SIG on their 2007 enrolment forms.

Student interest has been very high. The details have yet to be worked out but in essence the groups will have one timetabled meeting each week with other activities organised by teachers, students or memebers of the wider community.







Students will be offered coffee and raison toast (a big hit with this year's group) and special events in and out of school.

We still have many details to work out but the notion of a group of students meeting and chatting about an area they are passionate about has a lot of appeal...

We have also been investigating online learning groups such as the Virtual Learning Commons at the University of Manitoba via George Sieman's blog. Perhaps we can extend the special interest concept to self-organising student groups as well - even if they are just virtual.