Exciting. Free The Balloon had its first review from iGameMom. Check it out below:
http://igamemom.com/2013/08/12/free-app-a-fun-skip-counting-game/
http://igamemom.com/2013/08/12/free-app-a-fun-skip-counting-game/
Free the captured balloons by blowing them through hoops in the right order. Skip-Count was designed to engage primary aged school children and teach a foundational math skill: skip counting! Skip-Count facilitates the learning of skip counting by: 1's, 2's, 3's, 5's, 10's, and 25's. The game has been validated and proven to teach the above math skills by an educational psychologist and elementary school teachers
Monday 12 August 2013
Thursday 1 August 2013
How Free The Balloon Came To Be!
Our goal is to help educate the future generations around the world through creating tools/apps for parents and teachers to utilize. We are focusing on foundational math concepts and have examined curricula from around the world for learning outcomes to gamify. Let me explain a bit of our story.
Kids are unintentionally ruthless and they will simply tell you what they think. This is very help to the game development process if you are able to overcome the pain of game testing. Adults are normally more polite about their critiques. Before you are at the scary game testing stage you need to discover a concept or learning outcome in the educational system that is possible to gamify.
The area of mathematics was chosen because we thought we would have a good chance of gamifying something in this field. We sat in on a few elementary math lessons at a local school to get a feel for what kids found fun (with principal approval of course!). The teacher was covering the topic of skip counting (counting by 2's ,3's ,4's ,5's ,10's , and 25's) and we thought we could gamify this idea. Skip counting is a foundational math skill. So with the the learning outcome established we went back to the office and started working on a prototype.
We also polled the grade 3 students what their favourite and least favourite mobile games were. The answered did not really surprise us. Favourite mobile games: dragon gem, angry birds space, four pictures, tiny towers, and ski safari etc; but, the kids unanimously said their least favoured games were education games. The optimists we are--saw this as a need. We kept this in the back of our minds as we developed Free The Balloon because we desired to make something engaging, fun and educational.
After drinking from a fire house for six months (learning the new trade of game development) we came back to the classroom with our first version of the game. We gathered feedback and many more times brought in new versions of the game to be tested. We had the opportunity to watch kids play and hear their candid responses to Free The Balloon. It was a great feeling watching kids play and learn. After many iterations and reworks of the game we built a game that kids loved and parents are happy with.
We left tablets in the classroom for kids to play the Free The Balloon on. They were able to play if they were done there math work. Kids would rush their work and actually fight over the few tablets to play the game. Kids were fighting to play a game which is educational foundational. It appears possible to create educationally games that are fun and addicting AND again EDUCATIONAL!
We hope you like Free The Balloon too, which is free on both Android and Apple.
Let us know how we could make it better and email us: support[@]forsetidigital.com or leave comments below. Thanks for reading this far.
Friday 26 July 2013
Tuesday 23 July 2013
Monday 22 July 2013
iGameMom is a great resource for parents!
This is an amazing resource we stumbled upon in our hunting for quailty educational game review sites. Thanks iGameMom
Friday 28 June 2013
Friday 14 June 2013
Still wrestling with the missing text problem...
Feeling a bit frustrated here...
Characters written on a text mesh are being dropped by Unity on some Android devices. Day 4 of fighting an invisible foe...!
UPDATE: We have fixed the bug... it was an Android OS issue which was solved with the new OS update.
UPDATE: We have fixed the bug... it was an Android OS issue which was solved with the new OS update.
Monday 10 June 2013
New Icon for the freemium plus version
Friday 7 June 2013
New Westminster News Leader - New educational gaming app takes flight
Our first News Paper coverage of Free The Balloon... Exciting! Read the article below.
New Westminster News Leader - New educational gaming app takes flight
Thanks Mario for writing a great article.
Friday 31 May 2013
Schell on Games and Educations
Mobile games that educate the children! Is this simply a novel idea, which might pass; no, we believe there is an educational shifting taking place. There is a need for games. Games used as tools. Transformative learning environments were kids play and learn. Play built on curricula learning outcomes with instance feedback on progress and achievements. Schell writes in Art of Game Design (p 472) on games and education:
Some hold the position that education is serious, but games are not; therefore games
have no place in education. But an examination of our educational system shows
that it is a game! Students (players) are given a series of assignments (goals) that
must be handed in (accomplished) by certain due dates (time limits). They receive
grades (scores) as feedback repeatedly as assignments (challenges) get harder and
harder, until the end of the course when they are faced with a final exam (boss
monster), which they can only pass (defeat) if they have mastered all the skills in
the course (game). Students (players) who perform particularly well are listed on
the honor roll (leader board).
So, why doesn’t education feel more like a game? ...Traditional educational methods often feature a real lack of surprises, a lack of projection, a lack of pleasures, a lack of community, and a bad interest curve. When Marshall McLuhan said “Anyone who thinks education and entertain- ment are different doesn’t know much about either,” this is what he was talking about. It’s not that learning isn’t fun, it is just that many educational experiences are poorly designed.
So, why doesn’t education feel more like a game? ...Traditional educational methods often feature a real lack of surprises, a lack of projection, a lack of pleasures, a lack of community, and a bad interest curve. When Marshall McLuhan said “Anyone who thinks education and entertain- ment are different doesn’t know much about either,” this is what he was talking about. It’s not that learning isn’t fun, it is just that many educational experiences are poorly designed.
So why haven’t educational videogames found more of a home in the classroom?
There seem to be several reasons:
- Time constraints. Playing games can take a long time, and a variable amount of time — many meaningful, educational games are just too long of an experience for a classroom setting.
- Variable pacing. One thing games are good at is letting players proceed at their own pace. In a school setting, the instructor usually has to keep everyone mov- ing along at a single pace.
- 1965. People born before 1965 did not grow up playing videogames; therefore games do not come naturally to them and seem kind of foreign. At the time of this printing, the educational system is primarily run by people born before 1965.
- Good educational games are hard to make. To create something that delivers a complete, verifiable, assessable lesson, while still engaging students is very hard. And an average semester class contains two or three dozen different lessons that must be covered
Despite these challenges, games can be excellent tools for education, but they
work best as tools and not complete educational systems. A wise educator uses the
right tool for the right job.
Added Some New Flags on to Free The Balloon Game!
We added some flags to the hoops today... You get power ups, speed and tons of coins for passing through hoops with these flags!
Wednesday 22 May 2013
John-Mark's Educational Story
Elementary school is a breeze for some and a challenge for other kids. It was the latter for me (John-Mark Ferguson). I was a dyslexic child who flip-flopped the order of letters and numbers. Due to this problem a teacher told my parents I was unteachable. This was most likely a scaring event in my childhood development because I remember it vividly. For those of you who do not know, dyslexia is a disability that impairs a person's fluency or 'comprehension accuracy' in being able to read and write. The past and current education system still relies on reading and writing as standard practice. Thus having a learning disability in both produced barriers to success.
Fortunately, my grandfather found a program called Structure Of Intellect (SOI) which was based on military fighter jet training from the USA ( I remember him telling me: "jet fighter pilots did this too"). My grandfather told the teachers: "the kid is not dumb he simply thinks differently". Looking back, I bet my grandfather was likely dyslexic too because he was unable to spell and his handwriting was only legible to himself. He turned out ok and was a lawyer, a pilot, a physicist, commerce grad, and ended his career in charge of economic development in British Columbia!
After a few years in SOI my reading and writing was raised to a normal level for a kid my age. SOI presents learning environments differently and focuses on playing games, listening and neuro-plasticity to aid in development. I slowly became proficient at reading but I have never been able to write without spelling errors. I developed my own ways of coping with my brain idiosyncrasies and how my brain functions. For example, I would remember how to spell words, by representing individual letters with pictures of objects. My brain stores information with its auditory memory rather a sequential letter system of most people. You learn how to deal with your weakness and use specific tools to aid in your learning. The birth of modern computing has been a saving grace for me. So you can appreciate what a blessing it is to utilize the spell check function!
Fortunately, my grandfather found a program called Structure Of Intellect (SOI) which was based on military fighter jet training from the USA ( I remember him telling me: "jet fighter pilots did this too"). My grandfather told the teachers: "the kid is not dumb he simply thinks differently". Looking back, I bet my grandfather was likely dyslexic too because he was unable to spell and his handwriting was only legible to himself. He turned out ok and was a lawyer, a pilot, a physicist, commerce grad, and ended his career in charge of economic development in British Columbia!
After a few years in SOI my reading and writing was raised to a normal level for a kid my age. SOI presents learning environments differently and focuses on playing games, listening and neuro-plasticity to aid in development. I slowly became proficient at reading but I have never been able to write without spelling errors. I developed my own ways of coping with my brain idiosyncrasies and how my brain functions. For example, I would remember how to spell words, by representing individual letters with pictures of objects. My brain stores information with its auditory memory rather a sequential letter system of most people. You learn how to deal with your weakness and use specific tools to aid in your learning. The birth of modern computing has been a saving grace for me. So you can appreciate what a blessing it is to utilize the spell check function!
Jump ahead a decade: the dyslexic adult, starts attending university. With the the skills I developed through SOI, teachers, self reflection and introspection I was able to get through. In a career counselling session I remember talking to the counsellor how I wish I could help kids who were like me: Children who did not fit into the system as easily as others. But I did not want to become a teacher or a neurologist at the time so I put that thought back on the shelf.
What a surprise: here I am now, building an educational mobile game! A wise teacher knows when to use the right tool for the specific kid--but how do you know what tool to use? Learning is very subjective. It needs to adapt to the child rather than having the child adapt to the system. Technology will help aid in meeting each child where they are. We cannot change the past but are able to form the future. Let's meet kids where they are and use the tools which are right for them so that they can excel.'
What a surprise: here I am now, building an educational mobile game! A wise teacher knows when to use the right tool for the specific kid--but how do you know what tool to use? Learning is very subjective. It needs to adapt to the child rather than having the child adapt to the system. Technology will help aid in meeting each child where they are. We cannot change the past but are able to form the future. Let's meet kids where they are and use the tools which are right for them so that they can excel.'
Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG)
Hannah: "What is your BHAG, Mr. Fox?"
Mark: "It's quite fantastic actually! Wouldn't it be wonderful if purchases of Free The Balloon could fund the use of the game in places where the educational infrastructure is weak?"
Hannah: "That would be amazing"
Mark: "Just think if you had a whole series of elementary school math games: it would be possible for a child to achieve specified learning outcomes even if they didn't have a reliable school environment."
Hannah: "All the grades?"
Mark: "Yes!"
Hannah: "That is crazy!"
Mark: "Exactly. That's why we call it our BHAG!"
Hannah: "How are you going to do this?"
Mark: "One step at a time. One Child at a time. One game at a time. To begin with, Free The Balloon will cost $1.99 in areas where the education system is strong and will be almost free everywhere else."
Hannah: "Holy Toledos Batman... That is cool!"
Mark: "Thanks for asking great questions, Hannah."
Hannah: "My pleasure!"
Mark: "It's quite fantastic actually! Wouldn't it be wonderful if purchases of Free The Balloon could fund the use of the game in places where the educational infrastructure is weak?"
Hannah: "That would be amazing"
Mark: "Just think if you had a whole series of elementary school math games: it would be possible for a child to achieve specified learning outcomes even if they didn't have a reliable school environment."
Hannah: "All the grades?"
Mark: "Yes!"
Hannah: "That is crazy!"
Mark: "Exactly. That's why we call it our BHAG!"
Hannah: "How are you going to do this?"
Mark: "One step at a time. One Child at a time. One game at a time. To begin with, Free The Balloon will cost $1.99 in areas where the education system is strong and will be almost free everywhere else."
Hannah: "Holy Toledos Batman... That is cool!"
Mark: "Thanks for asking great questions, Hannah."
Hannah: "My pleasure!"
Tuesday 21 May 2013
Free The Balloon From A Teacher's Perspective
Carlee is a grade two teacher who graciously allowed us to come into her class. This is where we conducted our primary research for Free The Balloon and beta tested the game with her and the students. It has been an awesome experience. Thanks again Carlee and class!
Educational Transformation & Gaming
Vision
We are interested in: “creating transformative & engaging learning experiences that are embedded in games that have a rigorous pedagogical foundation.”
- We would like to be part of the Education revolution that is already occurring (Eg. KhanAcademy)
- The age of information has in some sense passed. The challenge now is to build on that foundation and leverage it for transformation and so facilitate the age of transformation.
- The focus is not on the technology whatever that might be (e.g. paper and pencils, overheads, computers, smart devices such as tablets) but rather on the transformative educational experience that technology enables.
- “Games” in their most general sense capture much more than the stereotype of some “shoot-em-up” diversionary activity but are innately part of what it means to play and in some deep sense discover what life is about. “The whole truth regarding play cannot be known until the whole truth regarding life itself is known.”1
- The intention is not to blindly accept the current fashionable technology of the day. Rather we maintain that we can ground games in a solid pedagogical foundation.
- To potentially disrupt current para-school Math programs with a $1.99 game which is equivalent to a $ 600+ a month tutoring system cost!
- To satisfy the demand for educating children in an innovative way.
First Game
Free The Balloon is a first in a series of the above grand vision where we: “create a Math game for use by elementary students that will run on any smart device technology.”(e.g. iOS devices such as iPhone & iPad, Android phone or tablet). Free The Balloon is designed to teach skip counting.- Skip Counting is a core math skill.
- By this age students are already technology savvy and verbally competent.
- Lessons learned in this can be used to expand the scope to more grade levels.
- The scope of deployment is huge. For example the development by India of a $50 Android powered tablet for wide deployment (hundreds of millions) could leverage games such as these in a powerful educationally transformative ways for large numbers of students.
A brief sidebar on Education & Gaming
Schell2 is worth quoting in detail: “Traditional educational methods often feature a real lack of surprises, a lack of projection, a lack of pleasures, a lack of community, and a bad interestcurve. When Marshall McLuhan said ‘Anyone who thinks education and entertain-ment are different doesn’t know much about either, ‘ this is what he was talking about. It’s not that learning isn’t fun, it is just that many educational experiences are poorly designed.” Examples of educationally transformative elements in Games include:- facts can be easily integrated aurally and visually and linked with rewards & instant feedback
- games are innately problem solving contexts that may be paused and re-played
- games facilitate playing with relationships engaging Miller’s pyramid of learning (Knows->Knows How->Shows->Does) This can lead to new insights.
- games feed off curiosity which is foundational to learning.
- games can easily accommodate modal learning styles (auditory, visual)3
- Pre Math foundations such as The Structure Of Intellect(SOI) exercises for Arithmetic & Mathematics4 can be readily incorporated into game motifs. e.g. CSR exercises could be used as clues in a treasure hunt.
1 Quoted in “The Art of Game Design”, Schell, Carnegie Mellon University, 2008 p. 38.
2 Ibid. His whole book is an amazing tour de force that transcends any stereotypes one has about gaming. He has some interesting comments on games & education on p. 443ff.
3 See “An Interpretative Guide with strategies for Using SOI” Mary Meeker, 2000
4 “SOI Math Preparation Modules: Preparation for the Math Curriculum” Mary Meeker & Howard Meeker 2002, p. 79ff
Saturday 27 April 2013
Free The Balloon Trailer [take 0.1]
Please check out the trailer for Free the Balloon! We are a small team of people striving to create a series of educational games with learning outcomes for kids. Play and Learn....
Tuesday 23 April 2013
A Free Version of Free The Balloon! is Coming Soon
The app will be called Free The Balloon! The exclamation mark at the end of the title will denote the free version of the game. Stay tuned for the release ...
Wednesday 17 April 2013
Friday 12 April 2013
An app to create games: where ever, with anything, and with who ever.
An app that gets you playing the perfect game with your friends: wherever you are, whoever you're with, whatever you're doing. Super cool--have a watch of the video!
Wednesday 3 April 2013
Thursday 7 February 2013
An Educational Psychologist Speaks On Free The Balloon
Dr. David Carter has worked in education for more than 40 years. He has been a classroom teacher, learning assistance teacher, school psychologist, Director of Special Education, and taught for several major universities including the University of B.C., the University of Victoria and San Diego State University.
Dave is currently a consultant in special education, teaches a range of courses in educational measurement and evaluation, and is a practicing Certified School Psychologist (B.C.).
Now semi-retired, Dave has worked as an unpaid volunteer in education recently going to such places as Haiti and Nigeria.
Dave received his Doctorate in Educational Psychology and Special Education from the University of B.C. and also holds Masters degree in Special Education.
Dave and Sharon are about to celebrate their 35 wedding anniversary.
Dr. Carter believes in the Free The Balloon mobile game. It teaches what we claim-- Super exciting!
Dr. Carter believes in the Free The Balloon mobile game. It teaches what we claim-- Super exciting!
Friday 25 January 2013
New APK upload to play store
We have fixed some preliminary bugs and have uploaded and published the APK. Thanks to the people who tested and gave feed back.
Version 1.3 uploaded to play store
App has been uploaded to itunes connect and awaiting review before the apple version may be released. Stay tuned.
After trying different software programes and techniques to no avail. Mark had a brillant idea to simply use his point and shoot camera on a stack of books. It worked great and we were able to capture some awesome game play footage. See above.
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Thursday 24 January 2013
Took a break
We took a break from dynamic texture placements to watch the Mec 2 engineering design competition. Give our brains a break from working on our algorithm. This subculture of brainy folks is always a great time. The students have built cars to tackle the different tracks: Obstacle course, speed and jump.
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| Setting up the obstacle course. The Sand trap was tricky. |
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| Speed track. Go fast then stop in a before hitting a box. |
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| One cart was half the speed of sound... the sensors broke. |
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| Look at that car go...Back to Algorithms we go. |
Tuesday 22 January 2013
Apple Porting Begins
We have it on the ipad! After wrestling with some O-linker errors we have a successful build on Apple. Woot Woot.
It appears we have some work to do with our dynamic positioning of textures.
Monday 21 January 2013
Beta version on the Play Store
We have put the game on the Play Store!
Things we are working on and considering for the game: Google doc
Please make comments below. Thanks for your feed back.
Things we are working on and considering for the game: Google doc
Please make comments below. Thanks for your feed back.
Free the Balloon Beta!
We are going to launch a beta version of the Free the Balloon on the Play Store in the near future. By a beta version we mean the graphics are not perfect yet, still tweaking game parameters, and changing the user interface design. We are hoping to use the feedback from users playing the game to help aid in building the full version of the game. Please play the game and give feedback. You can: comment below, send us an email, carrier pigeons, or smoke signals to the if directed to the new west. Whatever works for you. We appreciate your feedback in all shapes and forms (and flames) to help make this game more fun and a better educationally transformative tool.
A few screen shots below:
Start Screen
Chapter Selection
Game Play I
Game Play II
Score Screen
Here is the ideas and concepts behind Free the Balloon for parents, educators, and other interested folks see the--> Doc.
Friday 18 January 2013
Wednesday 16 January 2013
Android Development Woes
Why have we been bashing our heads against a wall for the last two days? Software development woes. The educational game we have been working for months recently stopped working on the Samsung Galaxy 3s. It works on all other devices both Android and Apple (Hello Steve. How's your 2013 going? Good idea on the one ecosystem). The Unity platform we use is an amazing product. It has a convenient bug reporting process build into the program. However . . . all our efforts to get this bug report process to work failed. We suspect it had to do with the size of the zipped up project? Undeterred, like two pit bulls on a mission, we zipped up the project ourselves, uploaded to Mister Google Drive and emailed them directly. We look forward to a response which we will report in this stimulating and exciting space! Fingers crossed.
Cool Math games for kids
There is a group of really cool education math game sites for kids: cool math 4 kids, Coolmath-Games, Coolmath 4 parents and some others. We have been playing the games on this site and are impressed by the variety available. This group claims on their website to have over 2.5 million unique visitors a day and over 30 million unique visitors per month. That is amazing. It appears there is a large demand for educational games! This is very exciting for us at Forseti Digital Ltd. If you have a chance to check out these fun and addicting game sites, you will be presently surprised with the amount of content and variety. Happy gaming and learning.
Thursday 10 January 2013
Intro for Free the Balloon
Free The Balloon Unveiled Google doc for interested folks, educators, and parents.
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