[Year 12 SofDev] Pondering SD U3O2

[gordonp at horsham-college.vic.edu.au]

David,
i know what you mean - there are plenty of students who struggle to get beyond the 'fill in the gaps' phase when grappling with programming. Teaching syntax to kids who don't get spelling is never dull...

What games do I do?
I've been setting up templates that are partially functional, or have comments hinting at what is required. Some of these are old favourites such as: dice guessing game, number memory games , screensavers with config screens, reaction tester games.  These lead onto : gambling on car races, versions of squash the rat, wordguess games, hangman, and simple shooters. There are also non-game apps such as ATM simulator, air-con simulator, backup app, mp3 database/jukebox etc. SOme of the stronger kids will do a bit of simple encryption and chat (and both combined which the administrators hate!).

I try really hard not to spoonfeed too much - and don't always succeed.

Given the new SD, there is plenty of scope to give PHP a a big go in unit 2 which may lead to changes in my year 12 course - who knows?? 

gordon 

"David Dawson" <dgdawson at mgs.vic.edu.au> on Wed, 14 Feb 2007 23:04:30 +1100 wrote:
> Gordon
> I am curious about your "game programming" because, whilst I have seen several recipe-based games approaches, I have yet to see any genuine game development programs at year 12 level - gamemaker and such aside - but if they appear and I am happy that the students are writing unique code - then I will jump on-board whatever language immediately.
> True interactive control over animated objects is a shortcoming of PHP, that is true, but it has nothing to do with GUI environments.
> The simple shooting and space invader-type games I used to develop in VB were fun for me, but other than getting kids to replace the graphics, i was never satisfied that they were moving themselves to any level above what we were doing together - often from texts. The use of the multiple arrays were just beyond most students.
> With PHP however, once calculations and/or DBs are illustrated a whole host of objectives arise whereby students can explore the code themselves - and never seem to produce code that is not unique from each other.
> But I am always keen to be lead in a new direction. 
> This year I am allowing one student to use VB.Net whilst the others use PHP so it will be interesting ;-)
> 
> David Dawson
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: sofdev-bounces at edulists.com.au on behalf of gordonp at horsham-college.vic.edu.au
> Sent: Wed 14/02/2007 4:03 PM
> To: sofdev at edulists.com.au
> Subject: RE: [Year 12 SofDev] Pondering SD U3O2
>  
> David, 
> of course a browser is not a CLI, but the first language criteria is "develop a graphical user interface (GUI), for use in portable computing devices, such as laptops, personal digital assistants, gaming consoles, mobile phones"
> 
> So my interpretation (unweighed by any baggage of course!) is that we need to 'develop' a gui. There is no network requirement there or suchlike. I do think the world of PHP but let's be honest, it's strength is in the back end mysql processing. 
> 
> My idea is for students to become conversant with basic programming concepts, with an emphasis on game development, within the confines of the study design. 
> cheers    gordon
> 
> "David Dawson" <dgdawson at mgs.vic.edu.au> on Wed, 14 Feb 2007 11:07:54 +1100 wrote:
> > That is an interesting POV, Gordon, because I actually have the opposite
> > view.
> > I think we need to get away from the old "thick" clients like Applets.
> > (just my view)
> > IMHO for an application to be truly useful for a "portable device" it
> > should link to a server somehow and be available to run on many of the
> > devices simultaneously - however I do not think we should be doing DB
> > work in unit 3 either.
> > I think that there is nothing in the formal definition of GUI that
> > cannot be run inside a browser, so why do you think that a browser
> > interface is not a GUI when we use form widgets and graphics? 
> > David D
> > 
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---
Gordon Poultney