Game Academy - Orientation
Well, I just finished the first 2 days of the Game Academy. We got to know the kids really well and gauge their level. It scheduled to be an orientation, to get to know the kids and let them get to know Jeff and I. But, after the first hour of intro, they wanted to get started! So we let them play with the Wacam Bamboos and with XSI. They all loved the modeling, couldn’t get enough. Although, there was one kid, who could not stay off MySpace. Boy I hate MySpace. But we told him he can go do that at the library, so he didn’t come back on day 2.
The mornings are for modeling and graphics with Jeff. They love that. Get to manipulate 3D objects and play with the tablets. Score! The afternoons are for coding with me. I lost them the first day. I did a simple “hello world” in Visual C# Express, but had them going thru the command line to run their exe (b/c if you hit debug it pops up and goes away). But this is the age of GUIs not command lines and I lost them. So I changed it up to make it more interactive with an Echoer. Whatever they type in, is echoed back to them. Then I created a little password guessing game, where they have 10 guesses and they really loved that! So the key is to make it as interactive, and the least amount of work for the most reward. I am going to try and have them create a MasterMind game, which I can’t seem to find in brick and mortar stores. Amazon it is then…
I will try to post up the lessons here as I go thru them (the ones that aren’t created on the fly). We weren’t planning on teaching too much but we had to adjust. I have a feeling most of the teaching will be ad-lib. So stay tuned for updates!
Tags: education, game academy, games, teaching