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On day 4, we wanted to talk a little about the basics of the way that software thinks about things and introduce a few of the fundamental abstractions of programming. I know it’s a whippersnappers/get off my lawn/uphill both ways in the snow kind of moment, but the computing experience of the 80s really did prepare us beautifully for software engineering careers, and, well, these kids don’t have to type in 6 pages of code if they want their computer to draw a picture of Alfred E. Newman like we did. Anyway, I introduced Eric as someone who writes software for a living, and he talked about variables and collisions and things that the computer would have to keep track of.

On day 5, the topic was the main loop of the game and continuing to build on the distinction between property and state; and the notion of stepping through the loop many times per second; when it updates positions, when it implements input from the players, checking for collisions or scoring, etc. Of course, this may not be the exact way that the engine handles events, but it’s helpful to analyze what would be needed to make a game happen.

On monday, we’re going to talk about the process of making a game, the types of jobs that are involved (including looking through the credits and seeing if I can hint them into guessing what QA means) and a few ideas about game design. We’ll play a few of the minigame modes and they’ll come up some of their own ideas for minigame modes. We’ll see how it goes!

Also, I have to say that we could no longer resist the opportunity to let them play Little Big Planet of Friday… we’ll see if they demand it first thing on monday.

The plan for Day 3 was to talk about the basic ideas of 3D space, coordinate systems, and how the 3D space is represented in a 2D image. I had two personal goals for this day: get the two girls to take some guesses, and say the words “Matrix Transformations” in a meaningful way.

Before the class started, I took a shot at singlehandedly solving one of the biggest issues in modern education: girls and geekiness. Now, the two Sophies in my class are really cool, smart girls; they clearly know what’s going on, they love to play the game, and they seem to be enjoying the class, but they don’t take any guesses during the discussion. There is so much built-in resistance to overcome to get them to participate, from the modern image of what girlhood is and what girls are supposed to be interested in to the ancient imbedded biological maxim that you can’t go wrong making a man feel smart. Regardless, they chose to take this class, and I’d like to try to get them to engage with the content a little. I had noticed that they were quite into the competitive element, cheering on their team and trash talking as required, so I mentioned to them before class that their team had falled behind a little bit yesterday because neither of them took any guesses, and they could help their team out by speaking up a little during the discussion. They nodded enthusiastically, and lo and behold, during the discussion, they actually took some guesses! It didn’t last, though, and I can’t yet try that gambit again; later in the week a Sophie would raise her hand and when called on point to Nemo.

It is clear that these kids by and large understand 3D, even if they’ve never really heard the terminology before. Nemo got a super papa bonus for correctly guessing that the third axis is called the z axis. The funniest thing is because ‘binary’ and ’software’ were answers on the first day of class that I got really excited about, they keep guessing those again just in case. “OK, how does the program know what lines to draw to make the perspective shape of the car?” “Uhhh, binary?” Which is fun, because it’s not exactly wrong!

However, we got through the stuff I wanted to talk about and then moved on to a 2 vs. 2 teams tournament. The kids are starting to get a little better at the game, but it’s still hard to get them to do anything other than blindly charge after the ball. But who could blame them?

Today, I split the group up into 4 teams with the intent of them staying in those teams for the rest of the class. In the open school way, each group covered the age gamut of the class, although I was sorely tempted to make a team out of the 3 Andrews and 2 Patricks and call it Full House. Teams can earn points for good guesses or right answers during the discussion, plus points from their team’s turns in the battle arena. I had put down Physics and math as the topic, but I really started with “What is a videogame made out of?” Which was initially answered with “uh, chips?” and with some prodding and discussion was ultimately getting shouts of “ones and zeroes” and even, to my delight, “information!” We talked about the difference between hardware and software (and even firmware), what the game needs to be able to calculate, and what kinds of forces are in play during the game. We also talked about the difference between properties and state in relation to the ball, which even led to the difference between linear and angular momentum. It was pretty great. Still a lot of answers from the 8 or so geekier guys (and no guesses from either Sophie), but I gave out about 80 points for lots of good guesses over about 30 minutes of talking, leaving 45 minutes to play.

On the first day, there were few goals because even the easy bots get right after the ball and control the match. So today, we tried 4 vs 4 with no bots and all the kids on the same team; I also added the red and the blue scores so they could get it into either goal. This gave them time to look at the ball and their starting places and see if they could make something happen. After the first two rounds of everybody running all over the place and scoring 3 or 4 goals over 5 minutes, they realized that when their positions get reset after a goal, one of them is usually lined up to bop the ball right into the goal, so the game became figuring out which of the 4 players was lined up, and then letting them shoot it as quickly as possible. The high score was 32, which we added to their question points to determine who advanced to 2 final matches: The Marauders ultimately defeated Team X, while The Blazers fell to The Destroyers.

For tomorrow, I’m hoping to talk a little about how the game produces a 2D image of a 3D simulation, talk about wireframes and textures and 3D modeling, and a little about lighting and special effects; and maybe get the girls to take a couple guesses.

Day 1 was off to a great start! We have the use of Mike’s content studio / classroom with a projector and lots of open space. We set up my 2 PS3s (I’m again thankful that a PlayStation Network purchase usually allows you to download the product onto 5 different units) and 2 of my 15″ travel LCDs with 3 controllers each. We projected the game onto the screen and I went through the tutorials so that all the kids could see the basic moves. Nobody has played this game before (except Nemo) and we have a wider spectrum of game familiarity than I had expected; some self-proclaimed videogame experts who were clearly not all talk, and some kids who sheepishly admitted that they aren’t very good at videogames. I have to admit, I’m shocked to see American elementary schoolers who haven’t ever held a videogame controller and are at a loss when confronted with an analog stick; it’s clear who has anti-game parents. I can’t help but see this as a handicap, but it’s one that they very quickly overcome.

The kids correctly identify what ’supersonic’ means (although the answered first said ‘faster than light, er, sound!) and Nemo chips in by adding that it means that the vehicle should cause a sonic boom. I love that answer, because that’s totally not in the game and Nemo knows it; but he’s applying his knowledge of the world to the question and that’s what it’s all about! The kids also go CRAZY when I mention that you can destroy other cars when you’re supersonic. Nothing like mayhem to inspire an elementary schooler. Lots of oohs and ahhs as the cars do backflips and such; and many helpful suggestions to defeat the tutorials and move on.

We then spent the rest of the class taking turns going 3 on 3 vs. the computer so that everyone could get a few chances to play. While they’re at this, I rethink my approach to taking turns the rest of the week; I think I’ll split them up into teams with all ages on each team to make it fair, and there should be enough time for everybody to get to play at least once each time we meet. During the discussion, I’ll award points to the teams for each good guess or correct answer; I want to get them throwing out ideas and see how much of what goes into 3d software they can deduce on their own. We’ll then add the discussion points to points earned in the battle arena and crown a team victorious each time; and the number of daily wins each team accrues will affect their standing in the final tournament.

Tomorrow will be the first big step; talking about the concepts of 3D Physics and Maths (not doing any equations, just talking about what equations need to be done) to see if we can get them thinking about everything that goes into even simple little games like these!

Stay tuned for a report from day 2!

My kid Nemo is lucky to go to a really great school: Ann Arbor Open School @ Mack. One of my very favorite things they do at Open School is called Focus Studies: three times a year, for 2 weeks, a mini-elective is shoehorned into each day. There are usually 25 or so different Focus Studies to choose from, offered by teachers, staff, and parents. Some are creative, like knitting, building a model, poetry, or writing and staging a play; or there’s a Basketball clinic, a Euchre tournament, a Spanish class, all kinds of stuff. Last year I offered a Focus Study called “Pokémon and Probability” for grades 5-8, and it was a blast. Of course, I learned a lot about what worked and what didn’t, how to engage the kids and keep them focused on some content that’s above grade level. I wrote out lesson plans and everything, but I didn’t keep notes on what happened, so much of what we did was lost to the mists of time. Well, not exactly, but I wanted to blog about it and didn’t, so I’m fixing that this time around.

This year, with the assistance of Eric ‘rhymes with toaster’ Klooster, I’m offering Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-powered Battle Cars: The Focus Study. Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars is a wonderful little game from the Playstation Network that essentially boils down to playing soccer using , well, Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars. One thing that I found last year when talking about content that the kids had had essentially no exposure to (like, say, the concept of a spreadsheet!?) was that kids were reluctant to throw out guesses to leading questions if they didn’t know the answer. So, to encourage kids to think and guess, I’m going to award tokens for good guesses or right answers (and artificially spread them around, especially to the little guys) and the kid with the most tokens at the end of the discussion advance to play the game… the idea is to use this game as a framework to talk about things to which kids grades 1-6 aren’t usually exposed. Here’s the basic idea of what we’ll talk about, and I’ll post each night about how it’s going.

Day 1: Overview of Game, What We’ll Cover, How to Play.
Everybody gets a turn, 2v2 and 1v1.

Day 2: Physics and Math: Gravity, Velocity, Momentum, Relative Speed.
2v2 playoffs for top token getters

Day 3: Graphics: 2D and 3D, wireframes, textures, lighting, special effects.
2v2 playoffs for top token getters

Day 4 (ejk): Memory: game code vs. variables, what the game needs to track.
2v2 playoffs for top token getters

Day 5 (ejk): Programming: collision, networking, graphics & physics engines.
2v2 playoffs for top token getters

Day 6: Game Design: Who works on a game, Specifications, Designing for Fun.
Mini-game modes, design your own mini-game

Day 7: Full Tournament for 2-player teams