Final thoughts on the semester

This weekend is currently THE weekend to get your Quarter 2 progress report done. They are due on Tuesday, which just so happens to be the second, and final, day of MCTC's Gaming I Fall 2009 presentations. The first day of presentations didn't go so well, they were very 11th hour-ish. I am happy to report that the second day of presentations went exponentially better. I guess I had put the fear of god into students who were going to be presenting that day, and they were fantastic presentations. I must find a way to make sure that students get their projects done in a timely manner and have these things taken care of. Ugh, if I can find that solution then I can become a rich man!

Still alive...

It has been a while since I posted here, and quite a bit has transpired. We finally got all of our student's paper prototypes recorded and posted to YouTube since we were having severe problems with Viddler. We completed the flash topics at the end of the curriculum for this semester which was pretty much a review of the mini game topic. Now, at this point, our students are putting the finishing touches on their game presentations. This coming Monday is the first of two days of presentations. The second presentation day will not take place till Tuesday, December 15. The semester has been filled with minor setbacks (swine flu for example), but ultimately I fill it has been a success on many levels and I look forward to seeing a majority of these students continue their game ideas in Gaming II next semester.

The scourge of the flu...

Paper prototype recording took place on both Monday and Wednesday this week, yet only half of the class has been recorded. The reason for this has not been long, in-depth recordings. The reason has been increased sickness-related absences. Several students missed both days, and my plan for Monday is have make-up recording sessions while Josh continues to start the Planning Your Game topic. From the few recorded thus far there have been some great game ideas. Stay tuned for links to some of the gems!

Paper Prototypes continue...

Gaming I students continue to make progress on their paper prototypes. Student attendance has greatly decreased due to flu-related issues. I hope flu season doesn't totally grind progress to a halt. Next week we will start to record the paper prototypes and post them to Viddler. Next week will be week 8, leaving half the semester for students to turn paper ideas into flash reality.

The starting of Paper Prototypes

Yesterday officially started the beginning of Paper Prototypes in Josh's Gaming I class. Some students have yet to come up with a finalized game idea, but I feel they will solidify they ideas soon. In the meantime, I invite everyone to watch the following YouTube video for inspiration!

One of my many memorable games

Before 950 different versions of Worms on the market, there was just plain old Worms on PC. This game, whose premise seems silly at best, is much more than what is shown on the surface.
Worms put you in a situation where you have 4 playable characters, that happen to be worms, on your team versus an opposing team of 4 worms. The object of the game is to use the varied arsenal of weapons at your disposal to kill the opposing team before they kill you.
This was one of the first games that I had an interest in "modding" or modifying or adapting my own content to.


With this game, you could create your own player maps and add your own .WAV sounds to add different voices to your worms. There was definitely a skill factor involved when using certain weapons that were affected by wind in the game. Overall, I have very fond memories of Worms. I am already wondering when I left my install disc...

First posted flash FLA/SWF - end of 4th week of class

Wednesday signified the end of the 4th week of class. That class was the culmination of the students Mini Game project. The students learned the skills of publishing and posting their FLA and SWF files to the wiki. Several of the students went the extra mile and embellished their games. Some fantastic examples of student work can be found here at KraZy's page and Bagh Nakh Kora's file. These students went above and beyond adding some self-learned skills such as poisoned carrots (which caused negative points), timers, and rabbits moved in all four directions. I can see that this semester has some fantastic potential!

Mini Game Project

Today I finished leading MCTC's Fall 09 Gaming I students through the Mini Game Project. I am Josh's support educator, so typically I try to add expertise where required. Last Wednesday and today though I temporarily put on my Lead Educator hat and led the students through the mini game. I hope leading this session allows our students to see that both Josh and I are there to support them with our expertise.

And so it begins again...

Fall semester has official started at MCTC. This semester is a bit different in that Josh Joseph is teaching a gaming class this semester, and I am his support educator. I am not the lead educator because I am teaching 25 hours (8 classes) in a different area of focus than gaming this semester. I have been sitting in on Josh's classes so far to make sure that the students get off to a fantastic start and everything has been going perfect. This has been a new experience for me, sitting back and watching someone else teach the classes I have taught for two years. I hope to lend my experience and expertise to Josh and his students to make their first class a success.

My memorable learning experience...

As a child, if you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up I would not have said a professor. I always had the ambition to become a carpenter and architect. My goal was to create the blueprints AND build the house. Even though my mother has been a teacher as long as I can remember, it never occurred to me as a possible career. So how did I get here? Well, as I discovered computers I decided to shift my career focus towards computers, but it still wasn't teaching computers. It wasn't until 2001 that teaching became a possibility in my mind. I was taking a Microsoft class that I found very interesting. One day, the instructor was verbally quizzing me and my fellow students about the reading assignment from the previous night. The rest of the class fell silent, I seemed to be the only answering the questions because apparently I was the only one that read my overnight assignment. After the instructor chastised the rest of the class for not doing their assignment, he sarcastically asked, "Since you seem to the only person to have read the chapter last night, do you want teach these idiots what they missed?" I agreed. For the next hour, I talked about the concepts and terms from that overnight assignment. I didn't feel like I was being put on the spot. I felt that I was able to talk about a subject that I found very exciting and hopeful foster excitement in the other students. Looking back, I feel that if I hadn't attended that class on that very night, I may have never had that learning experience, caught the teaching bug, and never loved a job as much as I do this one.

Day 1 Overnight assignment

I created two blogrolls tonight. First, I decided to create a blogroll of my current Gaming class students, my summer Gaming II class. It was super easy because I already had all of my student's blogs in Google Reader, and I was able to import all of them with one simple click (see it is even MORE helpful Jeremy!). I also created a blogroll on two of my favorite sites to visit. Since I am a techie, I live at slashdot.org, so it made perfect sense to link it. Also, since I am photography nut, I also check dpreview.com religiously. Both of these sites have feeds that I check everyday and highly value, and maybe viewers of my blog will find them valuable as well.

June Academy/summer Gaming II

Today is the first day of the June Academy. I am excited to see what new things are in store for Year 3! On the summer Gaming II front, I have finished teaching all the topics up to Testing and Debugging. Now, the students have an extensive code library created based on all the topics we have covered. I hope this will help them be more adequately prepared to continue their game ideas to completion.

Blogroll

I think that blogrolls are cool ideas. They have the newest and most updated blogs at the top.

a new approach

Going into this Gaming II course, I plan to try a new approach. I plan to have a conference with each student. I want to make sure during this meeting that I discuss with the student which game development topics that I feel that are important to their game, the timeline in which the student expects to complete said topics, and the timeline for their completed game demo. Based on all this information, I want to be able to draw up an informal contract that the students can put on their wikis. I want students to stick to their schedules, or at least know what the schedule is. It needs to be more than instant gratification, there needs to be more planning. Hopefully this will get students to hold themselves more accountable for breaking timelines.

Spring classes are over, bring on the summer class!

Spring classes, and presentations, are over. Monday starts the summer session of Gaming II. I plan to tweak my syllabus this weekend to implement some changes to the way I do deadlines/grades in Gaming II. I plan to create a way that students are force to do at least three different project deliverables. Maybe one around 4 weeks in, the second around 8 weeks, and the last at 12 weeks. This will help deter the rampant procrastination that I saw during my Gaming I and Gaming II presentations this spring. Or, at least I hope it does.

The light at the end of a tunnel ... is just another tunnel that is lit

Ok, well, presentation time is here! For some reason, it seems I am more nervous about this time of year than my students. Some students don't have a care in the world, while others move at a frantic pace. There are even some students that I categorize as "presumed dead", by the fact that all forms of modern communication sent their way seems to get swallowed by a black hole.
So, next week is finals week. Finals week brings the last Gaming I presentation day, and Gaming II's presentation day. After that though, it is not over. The very next week after finals starts my Gaming II summer class, an accelerated version of the normal 16 weeks course.
Here we go!

Progess report 3 and the end of the semester

Our third progress report has been submitted! Yeah! Now comes the task of finishing out spring semester. Since I only have four students in Gaming II, finding a time to do their presentation will be much easier than finding the time to do 26 game presentation for Gaming I. I am a bit worried that I won't schedule enough time to get through all of the presentations. So, my mission is sit down this weekend and hammer out a schedule for the presentations so there will not be any surprises for my students.

Drawing in Flash and CS4

Paper prototypes are now finished, recorded, and posted. That is a heavy weight off my shoulders. Now though, we have started to work in Flash. We have done the Drawing in Flash topic and are getting ready to do Adding Animation/Navigation. This is where the next hurdles begins. The majority of our labs have Flash CS4 on them, and this is going to throw a big wrench into Adding Animation. CS4 has changed everything when it comes to tweening. Oh well. If everything was easy, why would we do it?

Paper prototypes

My Gaming I students have started their paper prototypes. I think that this topic is the core of the first section curriculum. Everything that comes before this topic shapes it, and everything after calls back to it. My classroom is constantly abuzz with students showing their neighbor's their ideas, drawing, ideas, etc. In Gaming II, my students are further tweaking their games using the customized topics from the Game Development section.

Snow, snow, snow!

If there is one think that is certain, besides death and taxes, it is that every few years ice, snow, sleet, cats and dogs (not really) all get dumped on West Virginia. The students love it, but I hate it. Unlike the public schools, there isn't any makeup snow days at Marshall. Classes end on a specific day in May, and if you haven't covered all of your curriculum, then oh well! So, because of this, I feel as though I am playing catch up. My Gaming I students will start the Imagining Your Game topic Wednesday, while my Gaming II students continue to work through the first couple of Gaming Development topics. They are anticipating beginning to learn advanced ActionScript features that they can implement in their games.
Here is to hoping that the weather front rolling this week doesn't bring lots of snow!

Syllabus time!

Monday starts spring semester. It amazes me the amount of academic change that can happen in a single month. My schedule has completely changed with the exception of Gaming I and Gaming II. I finally finished my syllabi for this semester, all 7 of them! I revised my Gaming I syllabus with a couple of old rules and a few new ones as well. First and foremost, the attendance policy is alive and well again. My attrition rate was horrible last semester, and I blame poor attendance not negatively affecting student's grades as a contributing factor. When you miss work enough times, you are either reprimanded or fired. I believe that a similar negative effect should occur if you miss too much class time. We are supposed to be instilling in students ethics that employers are going to expect, and I feel this is a major one. Last semester I had found it frustrating when I had to "hunt down" student work on the wiki, so another revision to my syllabus mentions that work is expected to be organized and posted in the proper section of the student's project page, both SWF and FLA files. If this is not followed, the work will be viewed as incomplete and not graded. For each 24 hour period the work is incomplete, 10 percent will be deducted from the possible final grade for that project. Having 32 students this semester in Gaming I will require organization from everyone, and I wanted to make sure that was understood on Day 1.