Mr.J’s Blog!

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?