Learning how to code: Gamecodization - first results

(Usa la lista desplegable de idiomas del menú de la derecha para traducir este artículo.

Artikulu hau euskaratzeko erabili eskumako menuan kokatuta dagoen hizkuntza-zerrenda) --->

This 2014/2015 school year’s first term is about to expire. After approximately 12 lessons of coding (less than 12 hours of work), and one week for project development (homework time) the final results are really awesome, taking into count that:

1. Students didn’t have any previous knowledge about coding.
2. They didn’t know anything about game strategies.

As a picture’s worth a thousand words, have a look at this video to see some examples:

Here you have some of my first conclusions about this exciting project called Gamecodization (more at gamecodization.com):

1. Different levels of students: superb (20%), average (70%), poor (10%).
1. I divided coding exercises in stages, so all students could catch up eventually.
2. I had to consider repeating 1 session for the lost ones.

2. Student types:
1. Engaged: they know what they’re doing. They use pseudocode wisely. They understand and solve. They want to learn deeper.
2. Robotic: they translate pseudocode without much understanding. They don’t really know where to place code (inside loops, conditions…).
3. Lazy: they need to have most of the pieces in place to start understanding things.

3. Pseudocode:
1. It’s key to help students in the beginning.
2. It can be a problem when students just do things robotically, translating from pseudocode to code without further understanding.

4. Debugging.
1. Students don’t read compiler’s messages, they prefer to ask the teacher.
2. There are plenty of problems with variable names due to case sensitiveness.
3. I instructed my students to use PRINT sparingly to know variables’ states.

5. Exercise phases: a single exercise can have many stages (increasing complexity). Start really simple and build on them more layers. Examples:
1. Guess the number. Stages:
1. Calculate a random number and print it properly (no decimals).
2. Read a number from the console and print it.
3. Now compare both numbers, for higher than and lower than.
4. Loop everything until the win state is reached.
5. Include other elements: messages, points, leaderboards, preferences.
2. Avoid long, tedious exercises to avoid students getting stuck.

6. Homework:
1. Aside of coding games, basic exercises are of help to clarify some concepts:
1. Basic operations: use of the console, file I/O.
2. Arranging of elements.
3. Dynamic data structures.
4. Etc.
2. I gathered my students in groups and gave them flipped resources so they could group in teams at home.

7. Assessment:
1. Projects in pairs (in three people groups one of the participants tends not to work as hard as the rest).
1. Ask for pseudocode and code: the last one could not execute in the last time. And as a teacher you can always check the pseudocode to tutor them better.
2. Some interesting and easy games to develop.
1. Escape the maze.
2. Arkanoid.
3. Asteroids.
4. Snake.
5. Frogger.
6. Space invaders.
7. Other of their choice.
2. Test exam:
1. This will make them memorize better basic instructions (LET, PRINT…). Otherwise they’ll feel they don’t have to bear anything in mind, and they’ll waste lots of time checking compiler’s help all the time.
2. Anyway, I made it easy, in the end you want to keep fun in your classes.
3. Grade: you have three elements for grading.
1. Theory: test.
2. Practice: pseudocode and code (if code works well pseudocode shouldn’t grade anymore).
3. Attitude, interest, behaviour.

8. Game structure for arcades: for this first stage all the game developed have been based in the following algorithm.
1. Initialization.
2. Main loop
1. Movement.
2. Laser
3. Enemies.
4. Collisions.
5. Items (keys…).
6. Win-state check.
3. End of game
4. Leaderboard.

The main strategy for teaching coding through games has been:

1. The idea is not to teach the coding language used (in this case Basic256), but to teach coding basis (sequences, conditions and loops) and strategies to build games.

2. As lessons went ahead, I maintained a document (a sort of a cheat sheet), so they could know what instructions and concepts had been worked with, so they didn’t need to check the official documentation over and over.

3. It’s key to start teaching very basic things through a simple game, in this case “Guess the number”.
1. Print on the text console.
2. Read a number from the console.
3. Calculate a random number.
4. Compare both numbers.
5. Repeat the operation until the number is guessed.

4. With the previous game you’ve covered the three structures and some instructions, as PRINT, READ, RAND, LET; WHILE, IF THEN.

5. The students shouldn’t be breaking their heads trying to figure out complex things. For example, I gave them enough information to calculate a random number, as INT(RAND*10). The same goes for spaceship movement, collisions, point scoring and so on. It’s like giving them basic pieces so they can combine them in different ways to create a wide range of outcomes.

6. I passed rapidly to graphic based games. Visuals are key for students. For the second exercise we developed a rebounding point:
1. Concepts of x,y positioning (plot).
2. Variable for controlling the direction of the point (NE, NW, SE, SW).
3. Out-of-bounds control, to make the point move properly.

7. For the third exercise we started developing the Asteroids game (reduced version). In it I introduced the concepts of game structure (main loop), etc. Challenges took the form of:
1. How to move several elements at the same time: they tried using FORs, popping up the concept of time slicing.
2. How to set an element’s life-cycle in the main loop (as a laser), also popping the concept of flags.
3. One of the topmost curious things was the fact that some students had the tendency to include code out of the main loop, revealing they hadn’t understood correctly previous concepts.

8. Other aspects, as sprite collision, were easier to solve, as basic256 includes several ad-hoc functions. It is so easy to manage you don’t even need arrays to structure your sprites, as you can use expressions like SPRITEPLACE 1, SPRITEX(1)+5, SPRITEY(1) to move the sprite #1 to the right 5 positions.

9. After finishing the basic version of asteroids we started including other elements: explosions, animations, points, leaderboards...

10. As a final project my students had the opportunity to choose a game and develop it in groups (check the video).

Text based adventures

When teaching English as a second language it can be challenging to make your students read or even write something. But when reading becomes an adventure, then... learning gets better!

When it comes to reading you have many options. One of them, for common books reading, is explained in my other article the reading corner, which may be more appropriate for students inclined to books.

The other option is a game type called text adventure game. In it you have to go through many landscapes, houses, dark spots, castles… all described in pure text. And your actions are introduced likewise, typing text. Nowadays it’s not easy to find such jewels, as technology has given game developers complex tools to produce close to reality games. So, what’s the plan? Easy, we have to use an emulator, playable in a computer and in a mobile device.

Let me introduce you to ZXSpectrum, my first computer (yes, I’m 40). For this device tons of text adventures were developed. It happened the same for other contemporary computers, like Amstrad, Atari, Commodore… Some nostalgic people have generously maintained a website called World of Spectrum with an abundant  archive of games and a list of emulators for your computer.

But things get easier for you and your students. Forget about installing, downloading and executing anything when you can do it automatically with this marvelous android application: USP - ZX Spectrum Emulator. It not only emulates, it also has an integrated game downloading system.

Follow these simple steps:

1. Start the application.
2. Pop the menu (left button), and click on Open File.
3. Choose the WOS tab and select a game.
4. The RZX tab is for showing how to complete a game! It’ll give you a glimpse of what to do if you get stuck.

The app will download the game and make it run. From that moment on use the keyboard to control the flow.

Look at this video. I’ve used the RZX option so the game goes ahead on its own. Just relax and see how these games are played.

Now think a plan for your lessons:

1. Make your students play for a week or so to see who goes farther.
2. They’ll record words they didn’t previously know (e.g ColorDict).
3. The same for collocations, expressions, etc.
4. They’ll have to rank the game.
5. After playing for some time they’ll write theirs (I’ll explain it in a future post).

As you can see it’s fantastic to go back in time to find resources for your classroom.

Malware free computers

Viruses, search boxes, trojans, adware… your computer only lacks bacteria or even fungi! Your students’ pendrives stuffed with primordial soups of life, your Internet researches with showers of malicious cookies… and all of the sudden your computer’s overall performance plummets and your files start to fade away mysteriously.

No problem. We’ve just to apply a combined approach using different tools to get rid of all the rubbish. A teacher’s computer is the perfect element to be Pasteur’s lab desk (it usually happens to me), and every other week it’s recommended to deep clean the system following these next four steps.

1. First, sweep your computer out with these freeware software packages:
1. Trojans:
1. Definition (Wikipedia) a Trojan horse, or Trojan, in computing is a generally non-self-replicating type of malware program containing malicious code that, when executed, carries out actions determined by the nature of the Trojan, typically causing loss or theft of data, and possible system harm.
2. Solution: Superantispyware.
2. Viruses:
1. Definition: (Wikipedia) a computer virus is a malware program that, when executed, replicates by inserting copies of itself (possibly modified) into other computer programs, data files, or the boot sector of the hard drive.
2. Solution: you have plenty of options. You can try Windows Defender (included in Windows), or other options as Avast or McAfee.
3. Adware:
1. Definition: (Wikipedia) advertising-supported software, is any software package which automatically renders advertisements in order to generate revenue for its author. The advertisements may be in the user interface of the software or on a screen presented to the user during the installation process. The functions may be designed to analyze which Internet sites the user visits and to present advertising pertinent to the types of goods or services featured there.
2. Solution: adwcleaner, adwareremovaltool (use both).
2. Second, throw away other sort of dirt with CCleaner.
3. Third, tidy up your harddisk with Disk Defragmenter (Windows).
4. And, fourth… reboot to start afresh.

Voilá!