Mr.J’s Blog!

I am a big fan of conferences.  In my time I have been to both good ones and bad ones.  I won’t mention any names – although I will say that the VITTA conference for me has always been one of the best.  So what is it that makes a successful conference and sets it apart from one that is the opposite?  Being involved with the organization of the VITTA conference has given me a different perspective on this, but the general rules still apply – and for me it is all about the delegates.

I recently had the pleasure of attending the ULearn09 Conference in Christchurch, NZ.  I presented some sessions and attended many others – and had a really great experience.  During my time at the Conference I reflected on some of the things that set a successful conference aside from an unsuccessful one – and some of the things that you can do as a delegate to get the most out of an event.  So in the spirit of this reflection, here is my list of things you can do at a conference that will enrich your experience (possibly)!

1. Present a Conference session

 Present a session.  Even if you do it with someone else or break the time slot down and share it – just do it!  Often I find that the best networking occurs in the sessions that I present.  This happens because those that are attending my sessions already have an interest in the topics I am discussing.  I also find that I can get challenged in my sessions by those that have some experience but have questions or some doubts about what I am saying.  It doesn’t matter at all – presenting is definitely not a one way communication and I find I always leave a presentation with lots of ideas to put into practice.

2. Network with people you have never met

Networking is easy with people you know.  It probably isn’t really networking actually!  Find someone you have never met before and make a connection.  There may be no connection to be made – but have a go and see!  It can be easy to chat to those you are seated near in the Keynote or a session and even easier at a time in the day when delegates are taking a break.  Just introduce yourself and have a go – there is nothing to lose and it is great fun.

3. Check out the trade show

Definitely check out the trade show – but further to this, walk up to an exhibitor that is selling a product that you have never seen and ask them about it.  You may be pleasantly surprised.

4. Attend a session that you know nothing about

When you are looking through the conference program prior to the event, pick out those sessions that are of interest but also have a good look at those that are complete unknowns to you.  You may be tempted to rule these sessions out altogether – but how do you know that they are not of value to you if you know nothing about them?  It is a risk – and sometimes you will come away have learnt nothing at all.  However, you could also discover something new and incredible!

Recently, my main hard drive suffered a serious break-down.  Are there break-downs that are not serious I hear you ask?  Well, this was the kind of break-down that forced me to redefine my ‘levels’ of serious.  The kind that presents you with a horrible sinking feeling as you stare at the blinking DOS prompt when you attempt to reboot the drive.  The kind that produces some incredible (but ultimately quite sickening) noises when you attempt to plug the drive in as a second drive on another PC.  The kind in which all data is destroyed in the blink of an eye.

Each year I lecture my students on the merits of maintaining a disciplined backup regime.  After all, data is so volatile.  I have heard it said that there are only two sorts of hard drive – those that have failed and those that will fail.  I tell this to my students as well as other anecdotes such as ‘only backup that data which you cannot afford to lose’.  However, each year there are students of mine that lose data.  They lose data on thumb drives (which are notorious), portable hard drives, CDs and DVDs.  Yet the message does not seem to be getting through.  Is this something that IT students need to learn first-hand?

The amount of data that we are personally producing each day is incredible.  We are producing more data than ever before – and some of it is quite large, such as video and high quality images.  With the advent of digital photography, we now take many, many photos whereas a decade ago, we would have bought a couple of canisters of film and used them up.  Even then, there would have been shots that did not come out.  Now, we generally ditch bad shots after taking them and proceed to take multiple copies of others – just in case.  Have we become sloppy photographers in the process – becoming content with quantity over quality?  Possibly – but this is a discussion for another time. 

The collection of my own personal data is now invaluable to me.  I have a large collection of photos and media that are not available in any other format.  All of my tax records, personal correspondence, financials, etc. are all electronic and basically irreplaceable.  Given that this is the case, how much backup is too much or not enough?  Should we be backing our data up on a daily basis?  Should we be running RAID arrays or taking data off-site?  The answer is probably a big yes to all of these.  So why don’t I do all of these? 

I don’t take many chances with my data, but my recent crash took me completely off guard.  There was data that I lost which I had not backed up for a while and it hurt.  Is this simply a trial that we (as IT Professionals) must go through for the greater good?  There is no doubt that my recent predicament has made for some nice anecdotes in class – but has it made a difference to my students?  Probably not.  It could simply be that until we are the victims of such a data loss, we don’t think about how bad such a loss can be.  In cases where hard drives had stopped working for me in the past, I had found ways to retrieve the data – so perhaps I felt a bit too confident in this area.  Perhaps my ex-hard drive was able to sense this complacency and decided to put me in my place?  Perhaps I am thinking about this way too much!

So I am now far wiser in the area of backing up my data than I was a few weeks ago, and in this sense – the process has at least had some positives!

The end of the semester has come around and my students have submitted their work and moved to their next electives.  I now have a new group of students – which I am quite excited about as I will be able to build on what I have done so far.  It seems like the perfect time for a reflection on the semester, so here goes!

I have been teaching programming for 18 years and have been using games in the classroom for about 10 years.  However, this is the first year I have implemented a course like this.  For me, it’s all about engagement – and this course has hit the mark!  I wanted to give them an experience as close to one that they would have working as a games developer (in a classroom and in 6 months)! 

Students took a while to come to grips with C# (and XNA) but they did – with lots of help and examples.  I had to write a lot of material, and in many cases was doing this a lesson or two in advance of the class (as you sometimes have to do as an IT teacher)!  Students were very excited about programming for the XBOX360 and this has also helped drive them through ‘the tough times’.  Having said that, by limiting the course to 2D arcade type games and giving the students lots of examples, it wasn’t as difficult as I imagined it might be.

Teaching C# has definite benefits.  It is a close cousin to C++ which my students will come into contact with later on if they select an IT course.  It has also continued the development of my students for VCE Software Development 3/4 – where the ability to manipulate and write code is required.

I had the students form mini ’game-companies’ of 3 or 4 students.  Within these groups, there have generally been students who have designed all of the sprites / graphics, students who have done the menus and the infrastructure coding and those that have had the skills (and interest) in coding the game mechanics.  I think I can formalise this structure better by informing students about what types of skills are best to have in each group.  I asked the groups to create their own logo, which each group then included on the splash screen of their game.

I am going to upload some screen captures from the completed projects – so these will give you an idea of what they have done.   

This is an example of a program that has been written by a group of students adapting the tutorials that I gave them at the start of the semester, which in turn were based on the 2D tutorials on the XNA Creators Club site.

The cannon that was fixed in the bottom left hand corner of the screen can be moved freely around.  In addition, although it is hard to see on the image above, the enemy UFOs drop bombs.  The explosion effect is pretty impressive and utilizes some nifty particle code.

Another group of students has created a great Space Invaders clone.  The enemy space ships do speed up quite a lot towards the end and the frequency of their bombs increases – which makes it quite challenging!

In each of the blog posts that I write, I like to share my thoughts on topics that are current or making an impact on my teaching / life as an IT professional.  Sometimes I have a bit of a rant and other times, what I say is very considered.  However, in the past few weeks I have had meetings with more than 1 person that has told me that they read something interesting on my blog.  In some cases these have been people that I have not met before.  There is a saying that most of a first impression is made in the first thirty seconds of meeting someone.  Perhaps in this new digital age, we should amend this saying somewhat?

Everyone has a digital identity.  Like it or not, it is out there and people do get an impression of you (both personally and professionally) via the www.  The media is full of examples of employees who have been laid off after aspects of their social life have intruded into the workplace via the web.  For each one of these examples, imagine the number of times when employees have been passed up for promotion, applications for positions have been turned down or private lives have been exposed negatively and the story has not made the news.  References and referees on job applications are worth so little these days – as most employers will Google their job applicants to gain a real impression of who they are.  I have heard of cases where applications have not been shortlisted based on inappropriate images on FaceBook or MySpace pages.  Sometimes these decisions are simply based on the friends that someone lists on their page.  A person’s photo and bio may be quite acceptable, but add a couple of photos from linked friends with images of them drinking or appearing irresponsible, and it becomes a situation of ‘guilt by association’.

Digital identity is something our students both understand and fail to comprehend at the same time.  Discuss digital identity with your students and you will discover that it is something that comes with the territory of growing up.  It is infused with who they are and who they would like to be.  They create their own spaces, communities, links and web presence and yet they do not comprehend the ways in which what they say and do could affect them now and in the future.  My current Year 12 students were born around 1993.  They are the oldest students in the school and yet they have never not known the Internet.  They have grown up with connectedness and yet they lack a good understanding of the dangers of the Internet and the importance of digital identity.  This is an area where we need to do more.  We do much to spread the message about cyber-safety and cyber-bullying – now is the time to bring digital identity to the fore.

It is said that you never get a second chance to make a first impression.  Should we also be saying ‘you never get a second chance to make a first digital impression’?  If a first impression is made within the first thirty seconds, is a first digital impression made in the first 30 Google results? 

If you don’t make a habit of ‘Googling’ yourself, perhaps you should.  The ways in which my identity manifests itself on the www never cease to surprise me.  Sure, my web page features and booksellers that are distributing my books for example.  VITTA obviously features prominently, but what often surprises me is the links that will appear to mailing list posts that have been archived on web-sites or when others have mentioned my name within their own posts.  A comment that I placed into a feedback form on a web-site appears – totally unrelated to my professional life.  Depending on how you have various profiles configured, you may also get hits from Ebay, Yahoo groups or other online communities that you belong to.  Move over to Google images and you may be able to find a photo of yourself. 

The topic of digital identity is one for now.  Talk about it with your students whenever you have the chance.  There will always be stories from the media to spark the conversation and students will no doubt be able to relate their own perceptions and experiences.  You can always Google yourself in class as a demonstration – but (like all good teachers), you will already know the answer to the question! 

It would be fair to say that this semester has been one of ups and downs.  Overall it has been an extremely rewarding experience and I do think that my class in Semester 2 will benefit from all of the pitfalls that my Semester 1 class has encountered. 

I have students in roughly three categories at the moment.  I have a group of students that are flying in terms of their understanding and the development of their major game project.  In many ways this group has been challenging me in terms of their own needs – as I try to stay one step ahead of them and in many instances, not managing to get away with it!  This is where the teaching of IT presents it’s own unique challenges in that there are some many software types to learn and the depth at which we need to learn how to use them can be tricky to guage.  This group has an excellent grasp of C#, OO concepts, etc. and are creating code on the fly based on their own needs.

The second (and largest) group in the class are those students that are getting by using my code examples, adapting them and creating their own projects using these resources and others from the Internet.  Their level of understanding is good but not deep.  However, the projects they are creating are impressive.  Could they have created these projects without referring to the examples and tutorials that I have created?  Most probably not – but their understanding of C# is progressing and given more time, they would attain a level of independance that would allow them to do this.

The last group (thankfully only quite a small number) are those students that are struggling with the basics of C#.  I do acknowledge that this is the group I would like to do the most to address next Semester, and I think that this task will be easier given the amount of resources that I have created now. 

Very soon I will start transferring student’s work to the XBOX360 – I have already set up one in the back of the classroom for this purpose (connected to a large plasma screen that the Science department donated*).

*The Plasma screen has a black vertical line down the middle of the screen about an inch wide.  After about 15 minutes it disappears (there must be some component that needs to heat up or is overheating).  I might be able to find a solution to this on the web?

Well the end of Term 1 has finally come around.  I thought it would be a good time to look back at how my Game Design class has progressed with C# and XNA…

The first few weeks of the term were tough.  I had written a few tutorials – translating some of the content from the MS XNA Beginner’s Tutorials here.  Students started working through these tutorials and some were rushing through them much quicker than I expected.  Others were getting stuck with understanding the structure of an XNA / C# program, variables and constructs, etc.  This was very difficult as I was also trying to get my head around these concepts at the same time as trying to stay one step ahead of those that were finishing the tutorials that I had produced.

The general level of understanding of students during this time was poor.  The learning curve was a steep one and students were getting very little rewards for their efforts.  Their programs were almost impossible to debug as they were not familiar enough with the language and the interface.  However, it didn’t take long for things to turn around.

Once students had worked through the tutorial (in fact in many cases, even before they had finished), they started modifying the code and producing their own versions of the game described.  I decided to set this as the first mini-project and from this point on students flourished.  Students were creating versions of the tutorial game that I had not envisioned and many were very creative.  Many were still developing these mini-projects at the end of term despite the fact that we had moved on in the theory from the tutorial to some specific skills. 

Just prior to the end of Term 1, I produced my own mini-game called ‘Fozzie’s Banana Flip’.

By building this project up, I was able to demonstrate a number of additional skills to students such as sound, animation using sprite maps, collision detection, keeping score and randomisation.

The work that students are doing is really great and they are genuienly disappointed when the bell rings at the end of each class.  My aim is to get them started on their major projects with a view to porting these on to an XBOX360 at the end of the semester for play-testing.  I also aim to create a disk of all the games – it’s just a pity I can’t create an actual XBOX360 disk due to the security features of disks.

Increasingly I have begun to get a little tired of the use of the ‘Web 2.0’ catch-phrase.  It’s not that Web 2.0 tools are not great – in fact many of them are.  However, I also think that many of them are not really that useful in an educational context.  Often they expose students to unmoderated environments teeming with inappropriate advertising and dubious content.  For me, it is all about engagement.

One of the primary tasks in evaluating any Web 2.0 content should be a determination about whether the use of the tool will serve to enhance the engagement of students within the context of the course.  I currently have a student teacher who has been teaching a number of my classes and I find myself using the word ‘engagement’ an awful lot in discussions I am having with him.  Without me knowing it, it has become my ‘word’ of 2009 (at least until I change my mind)!  Watching someone else teach my classes has made me wonder how engaging the tools and delivery methods I use are?  Are forums engaging to students?  If used in the right way, with the right amount of prompting and moderation – absolutely.  As are wikis, blogs, podcasting, online collaboration and many other Web 2.0 tools.  However, the byline to last year’s conference (which struck a chord with me then and continues to), is particularly relevant.  Technology alone cannot save us.  The use of technology for technology’s sake is counterproductive.

Take Twitter for example.  Now I know that there are many of you who use Twitter and love it.  I was open to using it and have played around with it for a few months now.  However, I struggle to come up with an educational application for it – especially one that would engage students in just the sorts of ways that I would like to.  I remain to be convinced and perhaps someone out there can set me straight?  Flickr is cool but I rarely use it in class.  Google Maps and street view are also a lot of fun and have certainly fueled some good IT ethics discussions – but again I struggle to find an application for my own classes. 

I certainly welcome any nifty ideas or resources that anyone cares to move in my direction – and despite how the paragraphs above sound, I will give anything a go.  Did I mention that it is all about engagement?

At the end of last year, I decided that I would change the programming language that my Yr.10 Game Design class was using to Microsoft XNA.  For the last several years, they had been using both Dark Basic (which was really good for 3D stuff) and GameMaker.  At the conclusion of a student folio, in which students worked through exercises in both packages, they formed teams and worked on a major project using one of them.  This worked reasonably well, but I was looking for more ways to engage students and opportunities to make the subject more interesting.

The answer presented itself a couple of years ago, when I had a couple of students complete their major project for Game Design using XNA.  I had to set up a separate computer for them, as our lab computers lacked the graphics grunt required.

I thought about using it for a while, but one of the major stumbling points for me was teaching students C#.  Many years ago I had tried to teach a C++ course which failed – mainly because of the learning curve.  The lure of XNA and the resources that are already available on the www and elsewhere was the tipping point – and I thought that for 2009 I would give it a really good go!

I plan to update this blog with my experiences as I deliver this course and produce course materials, etc.  I will try and upload some photos and embedd some video as well.

VITTA’s ICT week has just concluded as I sit down to write this – and so it is probably a good opportunity to reflect on the past week, the ICT Careers Expo and the state of the ICT industry.

ICT week is now in its second year and has gone from strength to strength.  It has now become a National event and the ICT Careers Expo (as the flagship event of the week) continues to be successful.  Many of you have gone out of your way to organize events for the week and have either promoted the Expo or attended with your students.  However, this week is just one of the ways in which we can redress the recent downturn in our enrolments. 

One of the key messages that we wanted to deliver during the Expo was the state of the job market.  Many students are not aware of the opportunities that exist.  Of more concern is the attitude of parents towards the industry – and many of them still believe that the industry is suffering the aftereffects of the ‘dot-com’ crash. 

In Victoria, the ICT industry now generates over $24 billion dollars per annum.  It exports over $1.8 billion and employs over 85,000 people.  Nationally, the figures are much more impressive than this.  The growth of the industry is evidenced by an increase in the number of ICT jobs in Victoria – which has grown by over 40% in the last four years (over 24,000 new jobs).  I have these figures available (together with the national figures) in a presentation available on the VITTA website for you to download – which I would encourage all of you to do.

Slowly but surely we are breaking through the stereotype of the nerdy guy sitting in a basement glued to an LCD monitor for many hours of the day.  The reality is that the ICT industry is incredibly broad, spanning most other industries and encompassing a wide range of specialties.  Add to this the possibility of world travel, great pay, flexibility, a wealth of job opportunities.  You don’t have to act like a used car sales-person to sell this to your students – in fact, it’s amazing that they are not beating down our doors!