suggestions wanted: teaching game design to middle schoolers

[resin]

I posted this on ModDB, but I'm re-posting it here because I thought I might find more help from this community:

I have the opportunity to teach fifth, sixth, and seventh grade students pretty much any program I want with in certain limitations, but have been looking for something that will be relatively easy to learn and get some fast fun results from.
Some of my limitations:

-12 45min classes spread over half a year
-I'll need to learn it first and I'm really not that fast at picking things up and always short on time
-needs to run on macbooks
- preferably something free or at least very minimal cost
-should not be bundled with violent or inappropriate assets (even if 99% of the kids play these anyway)

Thats all I can think of at the moment, the kids are often immature but almost always interested thats not much of a problem and I'm pretty good at tying it all to state tech standards. In the past I've taught Flash and Google sketch-up to varying degrees of success different years. This year I started looking at Blender and Unity both of which I have some personnel interest in learning, but both seem a bit complicated for my purposes. As stated in the title I'm looking for suggestions.

If you had had the opportunity to start very young what would you have wanted to be taught?


Would Overgrowth work for this?

[Freshbite]

Well, if you'd want to teach them Game design at a really basic level, I would suggest the program Game Maker. However, I'm not entirely sure if it's available for the Mac, it doesn't say anything about it on their page and I don't have a Macbook to test with.

But other than that, I would have wanted to learn Java at such an age.
Learning Java in the 10th year of school, like we did, is waaay too late.

[Endoperez]

Game Design as in rules, mechanics, making fun stuff, or Game Design as in computer graphics and programming?

I thought you were talking about the first, which would be much simpler IMO. Simple dice games, card games, probabilities.

For the second one, you'd have to teach them both to use the programs and to actually design and plan a game. My class has had so much trouble making a simple platformer, with dedicated modellers, texturers, animator, programmers, art director/game designer/boss, all who knew the programs used for the game and assets BEFORE the project was started, using an existing engine (Unity), working every school day since February, that I doubt you'd be able to do anything interesting. Something, certainly. You might be able to get some interesting gamelets, teach some people something useful, but actual games? I don't think so, sorry.

You'd have more luck with an animation class. You could use clay, paper dolls or some free program such as Blender. When I held a class like that for kids, I just had clay, a single camera, and Blender for compositing the image sequences into final animations. I think the animations are still up there, somewhere; the kids seemed to be having fun. It was a very small class, though; any more people than that and I'd have needed someone there to help me herd them.

[Ebrahim]

Well theres already IT in my school and we are currently designing a game with the program freshbite talked about, to get further into it would be specialist and that would be a GCSE or A level subject.

[resin]

I'm checking out Game Maker and a few others today when I get a break.

I have done Stop motion animation with students before much the same way as Endoperez did except I think I used either flash or powerpoint or something to put them together. It was a fun class that I might do again, I think I did it 3rd through 6th.

As far as my goals, I wanted them to get a basic sense that the games they play at home can also be made by them and that there are tools out there they can get to do this, I want to give them enough background that they would have the confidence to keep trying on their own, some sort of end product would help to this purpose but I do not by any means expect an end product that is a fully functional multi-level game the way an adult course might aim for.

This would all be for the September to February period of 2010-2011.

[Endoperez]

As far as my goals, I wanted them to get a basic sense that the games they play at home can also be made by them and that there are tools out there they can get to do this, I want to give them enough background that they would have the confidence to keep trying on their own, some sort of end product would help to this purpose but I do not by any means expect an end product that is a fully functional multi-level game the way an adult course might aim for.

A respectable goal.

I don't think Blender would be a good option, if you're not good with it already.Besides the fact that 2.49 will be outdated but 2.5 might not be out of beta yet, the bad thing about Blender is that the students would probably be more interested in a specific part, but everyone on a different one.
Modeling might be the most straightforward, but it's not easy to learn to make the shapes you want to. If someone wants to learn texturing he needs to understand unwrapping. To render out images, they need to adjust lights and camera settings and set resolution and render settings. There's too many ways to animate (loc/rot without deformations, bones, simulations, blendshapes...) and to edit keyframes you need to understand the curve editor, and the action and non-linear editors would help. Some people might even ask about compositing, but at least that's somewhat simpler, with just image, audio and video sequences and some blending to think about.



If you teach them Unity, you'll have to teach them simple programming. To make a platform that floats in the air, you just need to put it there and add a collider. To make a platform that moves between two points in the air, you need a script. And because it's in 3D and they have to describe the movement in code, EVERYTHING that moves needs to be scripted, and that means that everyone that wants to work on a game has to script. It can be a good motivator for learning JavaScript, for some, but don't expect to get them making a complicated end product.
If game-themed programming course doesn't sound interesting, I think you should try to find some kind of drag-n-drop editor. GameMaker might be one of them, but I have no idea.

[cameleopard42]

I don't have any suggestions, but I think that what you're doing is really cool.

[resin]

Thanks, I hope I can do a decent job of it.

I've been going through Unity's tutorials, and its not actually as difficult as I first thought, at this moment, it's looking like the way I'll probably go.

I should make them do a Unity version of Oregon Trail or maybe something about leatherback sea turtles.

[Wilbefast]

Games would be a good way of tricking kids into developing maths and programming skills, since we tend to focus (and so learn) a lot better and a lot more quickly when we're doing something that interests us

I learnt just about everything I know tinkering around with Gamemaker - there's supposed to be a version for Mac but I'm really not sure where

[resin]

From what I learned the Mac version is still in development - I could be wrong - it will run on a Mac via Wine - but I just don't think I wanna go down that road. These are notebooks that are shared between many students, and I have to be careful that I don't put something on there that will allow someone else to just totally f--- up the computer, not that I believe wine will do that, I just don't know to much about it, the extra step seems kinda ify, plus I've been liking Unity more.

[rudel_ic]

Try messing with Lugaru assets with your class for 2 weeks or so. Should be fun. http://www.alice-dsl.net/wolf.mathwig/tools/py/ (I'll give you all kinds of support on this one)

Edit: Make games with Blender. Also fun. http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:M ... ame_Engine
(Python is super-approachable. Much more so than Java, for instance)

[Wilbefast]

Lugaru is NOT a good game to be messing around with. Try something with actual, you know, mod tools, and preferably free

You can play with the UDK or any one of the dozens of Open Source FPS engines lying around.

[Guillaume]

Hello resin,

I'm a PhD computer science student and video game developer during my free time.

I've worked with several middle schools and high schools, teaching computing, programming multimedia applications, etc to students. I'm also assistant director for a pretty big french company that offers camps on such themes to pre-teens and teens, and I'm part of their training staff for new employees.

So I think I can say I've got a bit of experience in the field

You have 5th, 6th and 7th grader there. You will not be able to pull off programming with Unity, Java, or any other similar tool. You might have a handful of bright kids that'll get it and have fun, but most of them will be lost. Such programs require way too advanced notions- we're talking about kids who, for some, might still have trouble with their multiplication tables here.

I recommend you use Scratch ( http://www.scratch.mit.edu) to start off. And if the wiz kids do get bored halfway through the semester, give them some Game Maker to play with- I think the mac version is in beta.

If you'd like to chat about it in more details, contact me by private message- we can then arrange to chat on MSN or Skype or anything like that. It'll be easier- it's hard for me to cover such a wide subject within a single forum post.

[resin]

Thanks Guillaume. Scratch seems far more accesible than Unity (if not quite as cool). The kids I'm teaching aren't usually struggling with basic multiplication, but they also aren't quite the geniuses they think they are either, and unlike gamemaker or RPG maker Scratch can run directly on the schools macbooks.

They did alright with Flash with just the basic principles of timelines and animation nothing too fancy, just the tiniest bit of actionscript on buttons. I won't actually be trying to launch this class until late September early October in the coming school year, so that will give me some time to fool around and get familiar with both this program and Unity, which at this point I kind of just want to know for my own benefit.

[Guillaume]

I think that a lot of cool stuff can be done with Scratch. For sure, it won't be 3D, but the kids can upload their own creations on the Scratch server, for others to see and comment (a bit like youtube). I think that's definitely cool.

A factor to keep in mind is that sure, you want to teach the kids about basic programming and maths concepts, but you also want to teach them how to work in groups, use computers and the internet to achieve certain tasks, etc.- all in all, a complete set of "meta-technological" skills. And that's where Scratch really shines.

Whereas Unity, Game Maker,etc. where made to make games, Scratch is made explicitly to teach- and that's why it is so popular. It's very visual (programming is made with blocks) which is a double advantage: it makes it more intuitive for the kids, but it also makes it easier to share. For 11 years old, it's easier to tell their friends "Use a red "if" block" rather than enunciate lines of source code.

These skills I talked about are covered in the "Partnership for 21st century skills" paper- I suggest you check it out. The website is:

http://www.p21.org/

And the paper that summarizes it all is there:

http://www.p21.org/documents/P21_Framew ... itions.pdf

There's a lot of resources on their website, so you can browse around


Same for Scratch- there's a website called "Scratch for Educators" with a bunch of resources, tailored for different age groups, etc. I'm sure it'll be a good starting point:

http://scratched.media.mit.edu/


The approach I tend to have when I teach with Scratch is dedicate the first half of the sessions to actually learning the tool, making small demos, experiments, etc. and then the second half of the sessions, the kids get in pairs and work collaboratively on a project. That has worked wonders for me, and I think it gives them a great opportunity to both learn the basics of programming and work on this "21st century skillset".

All in all, I think you can really build something awesome with Scratch. And if the wiz kids get bored around the end of the semester, maybe show them Unity- it'll allow them to broaden their perspective.