suggestions wanted: teaching game design to middle schoolers

[Dat_Ax]

I would've totally loved to learn game design or programming at an early age like that, unfortunately they're cutting it from our school's curriculum due to the budget D:

If you want to just teach design or what not you could just wait till steam is ported to the Mac which I believe is in the next week, and then use the SDK. It's really simple to learn though, so you might be better off teaching them something that would actually really help to have someone teach you as opposed to self teaching.

[ninjadingo21]

Well..... http://beta.atmosphir.com/Atmosphir


They can set up school accounts. Runs with unity webplayer (available for mac) . Free
Also, no code yet, its been described as lego + mario... so, i think you should contact [email protected] .... if you want code this isn't it, but pure simple level design. And its fun.

[Sandurz]

Well Guillaume, I do have to disagree with you on a very small but relatively important point. I started programming in Java when I was in 6th grade, and I got it fairly well. (well, at least basic stuff) I consider myself in no way a genius. Well, maybe a little above average if I want to toot my own horn.

[Grayswandir]

Java can be a pain in the ass to learn and use.

[Sandurz]

Oh my god yes...That's why I love taking VB right now. I don't have to create my controls!

[Guillaume]

Sandurz, I have no doubt that you did well with Java in 6th grade. I started programming at a rather early age too, and it is also the case for many of my friends and colleagues.

However, it is definitely not representative of the capabilities of kids that age. Again, we are talking about children that are roughly 10-12 years old. Programming is an activity that requires a fair amount of logical, analytical and mathematical skills, and most kids this age are way behind that.

For 3 students that will do well with Java, there is the rest of the class that will be very confused. And when you're a (good) teacher, you can't just focus your attention to the part of the class that is really good (nor to the part that is really bad)- you have to make the class progress as the whole- which is definitely harder, if not impossible, to do if you have some kids with Scratch, some kids with Unity, and some kids with Java.

If at the end of the semester, there are some young ones that are *really* comfortable with Scratch, then by all means introduce them to Unity for the last 2 or 3 classes. If among these kids, some of them want to learn more about "real" programming, then by all means introduce them to Java.

Although honestly, if I had to teach a programming language to kids that age (and I actually have ), I'd chose Python over many others any day. I know Java rather well (I did my senior thesis in Java as a matter of fact), and it has a lot of quirks that I don't think suit beginners well.

Now maybe I'm wrong, there might be teachers who can pull off teaching Java in a constructive manner (ie. not just having the students copy/paste code and not understand what they do) to a class of 6th graders.

However, I'm starting to have a significant bit of experience in the field, and I never saw potential for it to happen. Similarly, of all the people I know that are in that field, none of them would make it work. I think my perspective is fairly representative; but if I'm wrong, by all means prove me so- I'd love to hear from the teacher who can make it happen and get inspired from her/his methods

[Jest3r]

I'd go with this scratch program, just had a look on the main page.

its something I think everyone would enjoy, In one of my younger IT classes we shared game maker around, and everyone had fun, it wasnt part of the course, but it shouldve been.

[resin]

A third grade girl saw me printing out the Scratch cards, and told me that she works on it at home with her Dad and loves the program.

One thought I have had was that I could do one semester of Scratch, open it up to Fourth grade students as well, and then make it a pre-requisite for a 3D game engine class (Atmosphir looks very interesting) although Unity could be more educational, particularly if Atmosphir is level building only and no Scripting. 3D engines have an undeniable draw to these students, but if I think I would do better starting from Scratch *insert stupid pun cymbal crash here*

Guillaume is quite correct about teaching to the whole class, ideally a teacher should also be ready with additional support for struggling students as well as extension projects for advanced students while still sticking to the subject matter and goals of the original course material. This is often easier said than done, but I try. One thing that does help in this matter is that the class is an elective, (something somewhat unique for us, that we can do because were a charter school), so everyone in the class is there because they are interested in the subject and want to learn it, well with the occasional exception of kids that signed up to be with their friend who is interested or whose parents signed them up because they wanted them to have the class. Interest goes a long way, but students still come in at widely varying ability levels. I think working in a team structure with some assigned roles for different students will help with this.

BTW - I was never considering Java the programming language for a class at all (I'm far to inept to pull that off and I doubt I could get 20-24 kids to be successful with that) some light Java Scripting was all I was ever considering. I just want to be clear that the Java thing was a new suggestion, I sometimes make the foolish error of refering to Java script as Java when that is not what I mean.

[Freshbite]

Why don't we have cool teachers like you where I live!?

... DAMNIT!!

[Guillaume]

A third grade girl saw me printing out the Scratch cards, and told me that she works on it at home with her Dad and loves the program.

That's an awesome start!

One thought I have had was that I could do one semester of Scratch, open it up to Fourth grade students as well, and then make it a pre-requisite for a 3D game engine class (Atmosphir looks very interesting) although Unity could be more educational, particularly if Atmosphir is level building only and no Scripting.

I contacted the Atmosphir team inquiring about a beta licence to maybe use with my the kids I have in a month and a half (still waiting from a response). From what I gather though, it's mostly a level designing tool, which would limit its interest overall.
However, I think Unity would be awesome if brought up properly.

I think working in a team structure with some assigned roles for different students will help with this.

I think you might want to be careful with that- when it is left up to them, students will naturally pick what they're good at and not learn about what they're not good at. Working in teams for projects is an awesome method of work, but I believe the workload and skills should be shared evenly.

but if I think I would do better starting from Scratch *insert stupid pun cymbal crash here*

[ninjadingo21]

I contacted the Atmosphir team inquiring about a beta licence to maybe use with my the kids I have in a month and a half (still waiting from a response). From what I gather though, it's mostly a level designing tool, which would limit its interest overall.
However, I think Unity would be awesome if brought up properly.

Well... pm me the username and a temporary pass you want, and i might be able to get you an account soon


Also.. considering im in 6th grade... I might as well describe a little of what to expect. I know JavaScript and learning C++, but here what you should expect from the rest of the class....
K first, i showed my friends scratch a while ago, they get amusement by making a box spin around. That's about where it ends. DO NOT expect the students to create anything very good. Atmsosphir is the only tool that even interested any of my friends at all...

Anyway, dont expect to be using unity. Unless they're just using MSPaint (which according to them is still the best program in the history of the universe)and having you do all the importing, code, and 3D. Scratch is ok, but its not by any means fun like Atmosphir. Whatever. END RANT HERE

[Sandurz]

[Very well written explanation]

Don't get me wrong, I wasn't trying to say that it would be a good idea to teach it, I just thought that most kid who are interested in it would most likely be sort of ok with it. I'm by NO means a good programmer, nor am I incredibly smart, but I got it well enough to make basic programs. If it is an elective at the school he works at, most likely the only people who would take that class would be people interested in it. That's the way it is at my school at least. We only have two courses, VB6.0 (I don't even know why we haven't updated to .NET) and Java, and really, the only people who join are people who really like programming and/or have been interested in it for a while.

That said, I really wasn't thinking about the teacher, more about the students. After that explanation, I totally agree with you that it probably wouldn't work out. Maybe in 9-12, but not in 5-7.

On a side note, I can't wait till I take Java next year, it's going to be very easy.

[Guillaume]

Well... pm me the username and a temporary pass you want, and i might be able to get you an account soon

Are you part of the development team?

DO NOT expect the students to create anything very good.

Ultimately, the goal is not for the students to make the latest awesomest game, but to learn something

Atmsosphir is the only tool that even interested any of my friends at all...
Anyway, dont expect to be using unity. Unless they're just using MSPaint (which according to them is still the best program in the history of the universe)and having you do all the importing, code, and 3D.

Well, that's the point of having a teacher- the teacher orients and helps the student so that they can use and find fun in tools that might have been out of their reach otherwise

Sandurz: Definitely

On a side note, I can't wait till I take Java next year, it's going to be very easy.

[/quote]
Once you're really into it, you'll see that Java is actually pretty cool. There's a bunch of neat API's available, and it has several neat mechanisms (thank you, garbage collection) that make quick prototyping and development very easy.

[ninjadingo21]

Not on dev team, but sometimes I get internal codes I can share. And yes, I know that the point is to learn, I was just thinking what would get them most involved and what they should expect... I just don't think they'll get as into Scratch as they will be Into Atmosphir.

[resin]

DO NOT expect the students to create anything very good.

Ultimately, the goal is not for the students to make the latest awesomest game, but to learn something

Atmsosphir is the only tool that even interested any of my friends at all...
Anyway, dont expect to be using unity. Unless they're just using MSPaint (which according to them is still the best program in the history of the universe)and having you do all the importing, code, and 3D.

Well, that's the point of having a teacher- the teacher orients and helps the student so that they can use and find fun in tools that might have been out of their reach otherwise

That pretty much says it.
I'm somewhat used to the 'spinning box' approach from the Flash class I've been teaching. Some of the major differences are that Unity and Scratch are free and multi-platform, so if I can show them enough to get them familiar with the program then they could, theoretically, continue to play with them on their own without much trouble. The draw of 3D I would say is probably far greater than that of 2D but it would also be far more difficult for them to get to a point where they could practice independently hence the two course approach.
One of the greatest hurdles I'm forseeing with Unity is the creation of original assets. I could do some creation for them, go with other peoples premade assets, or try getting them to see what they can do with just primitives and textures, maybe something like a 3D Pacman - I saw a fairly decent Pacman (by child programming standards) done in Scratch, along with a bunch of mazes where touching a wall means death, taking something like this and rendering a 3D version could probably be done in Unity using just primitives and textures and still retain that same draw, paticularly when they see that the program is capable of so much more via just a tour of something like the island demo, I could then avoid that pitfall altogether.

I think working in a team structure with some assigned roles for different students will help with this.

I think you might want to be careful with that- when it is left up to them, students will naturally pick what they're good at and not learn about what they're not good at. Working in teams for projects is an awesome method of work, but I believe the workload and skills should be shared evenly.

A good point. I think I might have been getting to hung up on the notion of asset creation. What they do in math is work in teams where everyone is required to solve the problems themselves, but if they get stuck they must first go to each other for help and only once it is agreed that no one in their group knows the answer can they then go to the teacher with a question, it works really well for their math teacher, but she is a very good teacher who sets it up really well. They aren't supposed to actually tell each other the answers outright but rather where to look them up and how to approach the problems.If we did something like a maze project and everyone creates a level,then I could do something like this and work around that problem of over-specialization and coasters.