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.

XBOX360 and PC setup