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!

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?

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!

So why aren’t students doing IT?  This is the question that has perplexed many of us as the current trend of declining enrolments at our respective schools continues. 

Certainly many of us have invested a great deal of energy in promoting our courses and introducing innovation and interesting programs like game design and animation into the junior and middle years.  Industry demand is high for IT graduates and job prospects are plentiful.  We have all tried to deliver the message – but it doesn’t seem to be working.  So what is the answer?

When I was elected to the position of VITTA President almost a year ago, I was determined to try and address this issue in a number of ways.  By developing stronger links with partners like the Australian Computer Society (ACS) and Multimedia Victoria, we were able to start producing materials to promote ICT careers.  The inaugural VITTA ICT Careers Expo was held at Xavier College and was attended by all the major stakeholders.  Student attendance was good – but below what we would have liked.  However, it was the first year of the event and as the flagship event of VITTA’s ICT Week, we are committed to building it up in 2008 and beyond.

There has been some criticism of the current VCE IT courses.  As one of the members of the writing team for the current course, I stand by its structure and content.  We were very aware of the falling IT enrolments and of the need to build in interesting and varied tasks.  We also built in tasks centered on career pathways. I feel strongly that the VCE IT courses need to have academic rigor and students expect this to be the case. But still VCE enrolments have continued to decline.  However, I would contend that this is not as a result of the content of the VCE IT study design, but rather one of a lack of student IT career pathways.

I feel strongly that clear student IT pathways will help address this issue.  For this to happen, the tertiary providers need to come on board.  At present, none of the tertiary providers list either of the VCE IT studies as a prerequisite.  Worse still, some stakeholders have suggested they prefer to have students enter their courses with no secondary IT experience, as they have to ‘unlearn’ students who have done a VCE IT study. At the same time, these very stakeholders have been beating down our doors to organise information sessions with our students to promote their courses, as their own enrolments have been declining in line with ours.

Imagine if the tertiary providers listed the VCE IT studies as prerequisites to their own courses?  Alternatively, perhaps undertaking a VCE IT course could earn a student course credits?  If the tertiary providers do not feel our VCE or middle school courses have vigour, why not get involved in writing teams and focus groups to produce resources and course materials?

The challenge has been made – a coordinated approach to this issue will help all of us in the long run and may well be a large part of the solution.