[Edu-sig] a non-rhetorical question

[Winston Wolff]

I have thought a lot about this.  I teach kids (aged 10-14 mostly) to  
write video games using Scratch and Python.  They love it, but I'd  
like to promote more community and make the classes a little more  
"game like".  I've been thinking about old programming games like  
Core Wars and Robot Wars and would like to make some newer version  
like that.  Networked game play is an obvious improvement.  An easier  
learning curve is important too.  I made a little prototype where  
students could write code to control a robot in a field of robots  
that would show up on the projector.  But the paradigm shift of  
programming simple graphics to an event-based search and attach  
program was too confusing for them.  I think a Scratch type  
programming interface though would help things along beautifully.  Of  
course I'd like to have a lower level Python interface too.

-Winston

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Stratolab - video game courses for kids in new york - http:// 
stratolab.com



On Jul 8, 2007, at 11:29 AM, Atul Varma wrote:

> Has anyone ever explored the idea of using a collaborative virtual
> community for teaching programming?  I'm thinking about something
> along the lines of Amy Bruckman's MOOSE Crossing:
>
>   http://www.cc.gatech.edu/elc/moose-crossing/
>   http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~asb/thesis/
>
> As Laura was saying, having the students create something that's
> meaningful to them and their peers can be enormously motivating.  One
> of the advantages of any virtual community that supports third-party
> coding, from World of Warcraft to Second Life to text-based MOOs, is
> that they provide an excellent social context for computer
> programming.
>
> What if, for instance, rather than creating an isolated program that
> repeatedly asks questions about who the most attractive teacher is--a
> program that no one would ostensibly use--the goal was to create a
> simple robot in a text-based virtual world that anyone else could
> interact with?  Or a virtual dog that would eat people's virtual
> homework, or a hot potato that exploded after 5 minutes and covered
> its holder in goo?