Last week was one of the better weeks so far.  The kids are continuing to work on their own projects, and making great progress.  I hope to be able to post their work next week.  JStall presented to the rest of Avetec and the president of Central State, the college he attends.  Everyone seemed super excited about what we were accomplishing.  Perhaps when this is over, and Jeff and I look back, we too can share that excitement.  But now we are tired.

Missy was much better behaved this week.  She started animating on her own, and created some pretty cool little animations.  One was a worm squirling around and then splattering into a wall.  The other as an eye crying, then a heart thumping.  I hope she saved them so we can showcase her work.  But seeing her finally find something she enjoys was rewarding and energizing.

Kyle is almost done with his spawn.  He only has the face and cape left.  You know, the easy parts… Right.  I really hope he finishes it.  The twins are also beginning to fight less, or at least fought less last week.  Kody finished his chess set and is now working on texturing it.  He is struggling with figuring that out a little bit, but I think he will get it all textured up by the end of the Academy.

It seems the best way to teach them something is to get them started on a project and let them explore.  But getting them to work on a project multi-day/week without ever working on anything for more than a few minutes is very hard.  They will only learn what they need to learn.  They don’t seem to store tricks in the back of their head to use in the future.  That gets frustrating when Jeff and I try to teach them something they need, they don’t listen, then when they need it they ask us to reteach it.

Once we were able to let them explore and discover on their own they seemed to learn a lot and were much more motivated.  But it took us about 4 weeks just to get it to the point where they would rather work on a project than play XBOX.  Playing went from a necessity to something to do during a break.  Seeing that transition was also rewarding.

I think the main reseaon these kids were so resistant to learning was they just didn’t know how fun it could be.  They hadn’t ever really asked the question, “How do they do that?” let alone know any of the tools existed.  Now they have the tools and are starting to ask the question, and are able to figure out how they do it.

I guess my expectations were a little high.  But I don’t think it was unnecessarily high.  Perhaps the education system is failing them.  Failing to create curiosity.  Failing to encourage questions.  Failing to teach them how to answer their own questions.  But its very hard to do that.  It took Jeff and I, teaching the coolest thing we can think of to them, more than 4 long and exhausting weeks.  And we had about a 1 to 1 teacher to student ratio.  And Springfield thinks making one big school is will help them educate the youth.  It won’t.  It will hinder the education.  It was just the cheapest solution.  But that is another issue, I just feel bad that the twins and Missy might not be able to find what they are most interested in so they can pursue it.

I hope this last week can be rewarding enough to continue the program.

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.

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!

Yesterday we interviewed some kids for our summer pilot “Game Academy.” We are basically trying to teach kids how to make games, and specifically make games on XNA (for XBOX 360).

The first girl was not interested at all. So Jeff was all bumbed. The second one, Del, comes in and immediates says, “Hey, why do you have an XBOX controller?” He’s on board from the get go! Next were 3 more girls, uh oh.

Courtney comes in, nervous and with Grandpa needing to go to work. We quickly gauge she enjoys using computers and let her grandpa get back to work. Melissa is next. She is a cheerleader and skateboarder, who likes Mattalica and Grand Theft Auto (just like Candace!). Brittany is the last one of the day, and she is very nervous. Once we told her what we wanted to do, she couldn’t stop smiling!

In conclusion, 4 out of 5 students super excited to learn how to make games. Score! Now I need to learn how to do it!

P.S. I just finished combining a chase camera, and split screen. Meaning: 2 players can fly separate planes around the screen with the camera following their own plane! I will post it a little tutorial when I clean it up, but here is the ChaseCamera and SplitScreen examples I combined.