of the games that I've made using these methods and give you a template with a macro-enabled button for "rolling" a number cube.
First, let me give you a look at how the game is played:
For most of the creation process the steps are the same in both Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel. When creating the activity I started by typing out the directions for students. I wanted it to be very clear how to play the game. I then created color-coded recording spaces for students to keep track of the game rounds (we used to use a white board for this). This was nothing more complicated than selecting the cells I wanted them to use for each purpose, filling the cells with a particular color, and then labeling the group. The real fun came when I started creating the fishing hole and the catch basket. The fishing hole was simple, I simply selected a group of cells, colored them blue, and set the text to be white and centered. The magic started with the catch basket. I used a random number generator (Google) to get 12 numbers between -20 and +20. I typed one number into each cell, selected the cells, made the text a dark brown, and then colored the cells a dark brown. This essentially made the numbers invisible. My next step was to enter the conditional formatting. I described how to do this in detail in my blog post about mystery picture activities (there's even a video). Just as a quick reminder, here are the steps to conditionally format cells based on the contents of another cell:
The magic continued with the addition of the Catch Goal and Number of Casts buttons, but this is where I needed my husband (a software engineer) to help me. I do not program and to create the activities two different programming languages were required. Sheets required JavaScript and Excel required VBA. All I did in this process was to insert an image and label it, from there the expert took over. He inserted a script for Sheets and a macro for Excel. I'll spare you the long explanation of how he made it all work (because I don't understand it). The good news is that he did and says it wasn't difficult (so if you do know how to program you could do it yourself). The final result was the game that you saw demonstrated above. The demonstration video was made with the Google Sheets version, but the play is the same with the Excel version. The Google Sheets version is for sale in my Teachers pay Teachers store, but the frustration of being a Microsoft school continues for all. It turns out that macro-enabled files are not supported on the TpT platform and I was unable to upload the Excel version. But the GOOD news is that since the game was already made, I decided to use my blog to disseminate it--for free! And, because I feel the pain of not always being able to use Google Apps, I included a template as well. The template includes the macro-enabled dice roll button. To use it simply open the file, do a "save as" so you don't mess up your template, and design your game. The Roll button will randomly generate numbers between one and six, just like a number cube. I hope you and your students enjoy the game as much as I and mine have. Happy gaming, everyone!
5 Comments
9/21/2022 08:05:39 am
Thank you for your kind words. To stay updated on all of my new posts go to www.thegaminggrammarian.com
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1/11/2023 07:40:42 am
You are quite welcome. I hope you'll visit me on my new website https://thegaminggrammarian.com/ for more informative how to posts.
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1/11/2023 07:39:44 am
You are quite welcome. I hope you'll visit me on my new website https://thegaminggrammarian.com/ for more informative posts.
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