Game Academy - Day 2
Teaching 14-15 year old kids about 3D modeling and programming is quite draining. Thankfully, I got our intern, Justin, to give the coding lesson for tomorrow, so I get a break tonight (yet I am still up at midnight thinking about it).
Monday (Day 1), we had two new students and girls at that. One was on vacation and the other couldn’t get out of bed. After about 5 minutes, Sleepy throws the mouse down and says “This is stupid!” so Jeff said, “You can go home…” So I escort her out, asking her if she called her ride, but she doesn’t answer and just walks off. Thankfully she got home safely, but I was a little worried. The other kids are great though, and make each day worth while.
We have one girl, Missy, and each of the boys likes her a lil bit. They pick on her like any 14 year old would pick on a the cute girl in class. The all fight for her attention. Some more than others. Jeff and I have to try to moderate it though, because she is the only girl, and gets ALL the attention and she will get sick of it soon. Or not. I imagine that is how my fiance, Candace, was at that age… Cute, smart, soaked up all the attention from the boys…
The Twins and Del are learning a lot. Kyle really enjoys the modeling. If he continues to pursue modeling, he will be abel to choose any place to work. He is learning very quickly. He flew thru Jeff’s wheel tutorial. Kody, his twin, is also learning a lot, but hasn’t quite found his passion. Kody says he likes the coding but we’ll see. Del mostly just likes to play games. But he is also learning quickly.
I am trying to teach them programming, which they no nothing about, while avoiding the boring stuff (like that Hello World from orientation). If the end result doesn’t have that “Cool” factor, and have it with next to zero work, I tend to lose them. Yesterday they got to program for the 360 Controllers, changing the background color by pressing X,Y,A,B. They thought that was cool, but I don’t think they are learning the concepts yet. How can I teach them the concepts without lecturing too them? I was thinking of explaining variables and types like containers (i.e. you wouldn’t want to pour water in a paper bag, you need a glass cup (type) to store the water). Jeff and I were talking and had a good concrete example, using the kids as objects:
Boy Kody = new Kody();
Food Apple = new Apple(Sour);
Kody.Eat(Apple);
Girl Missy = new Missy();
Answer GoOut = Kody.AskOut(Missy);
if(GoOut)
Kody.SetMood(Happy);
else
Kody.SetMood(Sad);
print(Kody.Mood);
output >> Sad.
I think that will go well… I am getting a lot of examples from Microsoft® XNA Game Studio 2.0: Learn Programming Now! which is very good for beginners. Next week, rather than MasterMind, I think I will have them try to make Simon. Jeff will teach them to make the graphics for the buttons–we learned how to import a picture into XNA today–and I’ll teach them the more complicated than I thought code. I keep hearing Yoda, “You need to unlearn what you have learned…” Things I think will be simple, get complicated quickly. But I have confidence in these kids.
Tags: education, game academy, games, teaching, xna