development of a video game programming course at cajon high school

DEVELOPMENT OF A VIDEO GAME PROGRAMMING

COURSEAT CAJON HIGH SCHOOL

Eric GalleryManuel MendezDavid A. Turner

Arturo I Concepcion

What? As part of a National Science

Foundation grant titled "Revitalizing Computing Education through Community-Based Video Game Development Projects," CSUSB student Manuel Mendez, professors Dr. Concepcion and Dr. Turner, and Cajon high school teacher Eric Gallery develop a course on game programming.

Why? The purpose of the course is to help

students acquire the knowledge and skills identified within the academic and technical standards that comprise the Programming and Systems Development pathway of the California State Career Technical Education standards.

How?  It does this by engaging high school

students in computational thinking needed to construct video games.

The Tool Game Maker is an integrated

development environment (IDE) for Windows or Mac.

Why Game Maker? Game Maker allows users to easily

develop computer games without the requirement of prior computer programming experience by using a graphic user interface (GUI), while allowing advanced users to create complex applications with its built-in scripting language.

Starting Off We begin by giving the high school

students lesson plans on topics such as tracing through a program or simple statements or loops. Lessons such as these will jump start computational thinking.

Programming Concepts We introduce programming concepts

like if-then statements, for loops, variables, and algorithms by putting them into everyday situations like receiving a text message or tying your shoes.

if statement Text received; If(inClass=false) //You are not in class. { Read text message; If( important=true) //Check to see if it is important. { Reply to text; //if it is important reply or take action. } Else if( wantToTextBack = true) //if it is not important check to see if you want to reply. { Reply to text; //if so, reply to text. } Else //if not, ignore text message. { Ignore text message; } } Else //if you are in class. { Wait for class to end to read text; }

Next We give them examples and hands on

activities to reinforce the lesson plans

Labs Then we give them an assignment

similar to the example where they must recreate what they have learned with their own tweaks.

Finally They are given a test at the end of this

process as a final check to see how much they have learned.

Scripting Towards the midpoint of the course the

students will be taken a step further into programming by changing their Game Maker GUI code into scripting code.

Making a Game For finals in this course, the students will

create a playable video game to present to the class.

Down the Road By the end of this course

students will have improved their computational thinking skills and have a general idea of what is computer science.