Looking for ideas on a course to teach GLB to youth

Previous topic - Next topic

Falstaff

Quote from: r0ber7 on 2012-Sep-24
I have one additional thought. While it will be good to start with the basic IF THEN and FOR stuff, make it visual as fast as you can. Moving a sprite with the arrow keys shouldn't be too hard to understand once the basics are in place, and it's incredibly rewarding.

Good call, that was one of the first things we did with my son and it was definitely a big hit. He was getting all into the groove of going into Tools->Keycodes to find the right code to use and everything :) I might try to do this towards the end of day 1.

Oh, and nice looking book Erico, too bad I don't speak spanish :)

erico

That is an ancient portuguese version, the english one goes by ace of aces, and inside, it looks like the pic attached.
Really funky, you play with a friend (that´s why it cames in two), so each chooses a maneuver on the plane, there is some math and the final page for each comes out, really nice.

edit: I do believe these books paved my love for Wings from cinemaware back on the amiga days.

[attachment deleted by admin]

johnparker29

I am looking to get some reviews about the best way to strategy such a category.. I have only trained development to my son before, and it was obviously 1 on 1, so I could straight information him through every declaration. With an whole team (of say 10) children, I won't be able to provide the same interest to each personal. Should I maybe cause them through some value on a projector as a team, and then present a issue for them to try to fix own their own?


LineOf7s

Quote from: erico on 2012-Sep-25
That is an ancient portuguese version, the english one goes by ace of aces, and inside, it looks like the pic attached.
Really funky, you play with a friend (that´s why it cames in two), so each chooses a maneuver on the plane, there is some math and the final page for each comes out, really nice.

edit: I do believe these books paved my love for Wings from cinemaware back on the amiga days.

Sorry for being off-topic, but I thought I'd mention that these books were recently kickstarted successfully and should be available soon-ish on the Flying Buffalo Ace Of Aces page if people are interested.

(The website is awful, but the information and ability to buy and/or contact the publisher is on there somewhere.)

erico

Thanks LineOf7s, I didn´t know they were out and kickstarted.
By the number of backers, I guess they were not that famous as I thought.

I got hold of mine some 25 years ago, they were already competing with videogames, maybe people didn´t have a chance to prove its worth.
But I love them. :-*

FutureCow

It seems like running a programming course using GLB is a common idea! I've only gotten as far as thinking about it though.

My thoughts ...

BigSofty hit the nail on the head - entertain first, educate second. No one (child or adult) is going to want to sit through Hello World type exercises for very long in short term course - they want to learn to write games and they want to learn to write them yesterday. So show them a game, then break it down so when you talk about something like a loop or an array they see why they're important.

The way I thought of doing it would be to do something like
1) Show them pacman
2) Show them a cut down version which is only a corridor. Animate a ghost moving down it - use that to show what a loop is. Change the length of the loop / the step value etc to demonstrate how they affect the ghost's movement
3) Show a map where every square has food in it, then one with half of the map with food in it etc, cut to the code that shows 1s and 0s in an array to show where the food ends up. Manipulate values in real time to show it changing the food placement in the level - use that to explain arrays.
4) Show pacman moving without any map. Use it to demonstrate how the keyboard input / switch statement works.

etc.

Each time you show them something you're showing something tangible in an "exciting" game, and straight away relating it to the code so they understand the theory. You also modify the code and show what that does to your "game" to reinforce the theory. It'll sink in a lot more than just reading them the theory off a slide.
Once they understand the basic theories and have seen them applied in a real (and INTERESTING!) game scenario, then get them to start writing their own version of naughts and crosses etc.

Kids will be hard to interest if you start with monochrome type games / text adventures, they want to get hooked by something with colourful graphics that's fun. I think if you start with "the basics" from a book/slide and don't show them a practical and fun "game" application for the theories until a few lessons later, they will already have not paid enough attention and the theories won't have sunk in.

Keep the interest alive by letting them do things like compile their own android version of their naughts and crosses game (provide them fun graphics to use instead of just a circle and a cross - take their photo and use that instead, and use yours for the AI for example). This way they can take something home at the end of the lesson that they can show to their friends and say "look what I made!" The most exciting thing about any course you do is to be able to tell/show everyone else.

The biggest problem I came across while planning a course was where to get enough pre-made graphics and sounds so you don't lose 90% of your lesson time having the students trying to draw something.

Lastly, have some contingency plans. You might find that either you finish all your lessons a few weeks early, or you're a few weeks behind, so know what you'll do if these sorts of things happen. Also, what will you do when someone's sick for a week then doesn't understand what you're teaching when they show up the next week?

Hope that's useful!

erico

Great line of thought.

On the gfx, try using pictures or pictures of drawing, do quick masks on gimp, should be straight foward enough.
Also, kids might enjoy a bit of gimp as it allows them mixing their own pictures.