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!

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!

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.   

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!

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! 

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.

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?

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.

So what’s new on the horizon for this year? 

 I know teachers and students around the world have been vodcasting for some time, but this year I will begin my first foray into this (sometimes trivial) genre.  I have decided to make use of TeacherTube and upload videos for my classes (and anyone else who is interested) to make use of.  Depending on how that goes, I will possibly get some of students to do the same (I had an idea for some student panel discussions – but it remains to be seen as to whether I can interest them in doing it). 

I also plan to make use of some student blogging using the excellent Edublogs web-site (of which you are no doubt familiar with!)

 If you haven’t seen the thought provoking video clip created by Michael Wesch titled ‘A Vision of Students Today’, then I suggest you seek it out and have a look.  In it, Michael explores the landscape of the modern classroom, our place in it and the ways in which students are engaged (or otherwise).  With so many things competing for the attention of our students, we need to be both resourceful and willing to embrace new and interesting tools in order that we can compete.  However, the video does not preach that we need to adopt these technologies or risk not engaging our students.  We could certainly all create MySpace and FaceBook pages and chat with our students on MSN – however, this would not necessarily give us a better chance of creating a dynamic learning community.  In actual fact, launching ourselves full tilt into these domains so heavily populated by digital natives could make us look like we are trying too hard.  There may be no argument that the ‘digital natives’ are the masters of the technology, and we are ‘on the fringe’, however, they are not the masters of their own learning.  This is where we can place ourselves – and we can do so effectively by utilising those technologies that we can reasonably harness in the time we have available and in the context of what we are trying to achieve.