Play 2 Learn Computer Club

Proposed After-School Program

Update (27 Aug 08): The school district is very slow to work with, so I've arranged with a high school teacher to try out a few sessions using Greenfoot with his Introduction to Programming class.

Play 2 Learn Computer Club is a fun activity club where students play and create free games using Greenfoot, a game-based software development environment suitable for novices. Rather than teaching object-oriented programming, which is possible with Greenfoot, this club offers a hands-on introduction to software development and gives students the freedom to learn as much as they'd like. For example, they are free to only attend "class" to learn about the games and to play and create games while in class without studying the resource material. For students who desire to work independently outside of class, the club offers plenty of resources.

• Schedule
• Hackerteen Story
• Leader Activities
• Student Activities
• Equipment and Software Requirements
• See Also

Schedule

Hackerteen Story

Hackerteen: Volume 1: Internet Blackout, an entertaining graphic novel (aka fancy comic book!), is completely unrelated to Greenfoot. One of the main points of the story is that for kids who would like to be on their computers 24x7, if only their parents would let them, they should not be mere consumers of computer technology, they should learn to be producers. But with knowledge comes power, and therefore the Hackerteen School teaches not just technical skills but also ethics applied to the field of computer technology. Discussing ethical challenges and behavior in online communities and virtual worlds is important for real students, also, not just storybook characters.

The Hackerteen website actually offers distance learning courses on technology, security, and ethics, letting teenage students earn belts, as they might in a martial arts school. This is similar to the "school" in the novel. Unfortunately for us, in the real world, the Hackerteen courses are not yet available in English! So for this club, we will simply read the book for fun and then discuss the ethical questions outlined in the next section.

Leader Activities

Following are examples of the club leader's activities. Depending on the activity, the students might watch it on a screen at the front of the room, participate in a live discussion, or follow along together by performing the same steps on their computers.

1. Play games on Greenfoot Gallery
2. Run Greenfoot: Open and run each scenario in the Scenarios folder in Greenfoot. Learn the function of these buttons: Compile All, Act, and Run.
3. Make minor changes to a few scenarios and watch how the game changes. In particular, observe the connection between the code and the resulting behavior of the actors in the game.
4. Watch these two videos: Greenfoot Introduction (12 minutes) and Creating a New Scenario (7 minutes). Afterwards, work together to create a scenario just like the one in the video on the leader's computer, which is projected to the front of the class.
5. Watch the other basic videos and then work together to write the code that accomplishes the tasks explained in each video: making objects move, creating backgrounds, reacting to mouse clicks.
6. Step through the Greenfoot Tutorial, with students working on their own computers in parallel with the leader's computer. Advanced students: Customize the features described in the tutorial, for example, creating a different sort of animal, controls, or actions--whatever the students want to attempt.
7. Cover the following topics in a Hackerteen group discussion:
   1. What does the word "hacker" mean? Are there "good hackers" around? What problems have hackers caused? Do hackers break laws?
   2. What are some of the examples from history of people who broke laws on purpose to call attention to a law with which they disagreed? What is that action called? If you break a law, does your reason for breaking the law matter in the courts? How old do you have to be to practice civil disobedience?
   3. Though fictional, the Hackerteen novel links to real-live technologies. What are those technologies?
   4. In the Volume I story, which characters make mistakes? Cite a few examples of poor judgment.
8. Greenfoot How-Do-I? Students who are working on a scenario and who have encountered problems in implementing their ideas describe the problems to the class. The leader then demonstrates how to analyze one of those problems and, as a first step, solves at least a part of it.

Student Activities

The following three example activities are appropriate for one to three students to work on, either in or after class. They are to bring questions to the next meeting or have them answered online by those on the club discussion list.

1. Play more games on Greenfoot Gallery
2. Modify a scenario that you created together: The picture or animal for the actor, the background, whatever you desire to change.
3. Read a portion of the Hackerteen novel or its entirety. Read Volume II after it's published.
4. Write and draw, on paper, your idea for a game you can create in Greenfoot and show it to other students and the Leader to get their feedback on your ideas.
5. Create your own game for one person.
6. Create a game for two people to play on the same computer, sharing the keyboard.
7. Create a game that uses sound.
8. Download the source code for a scenario on the Greenfoot Gallery and then:
   1. Read the code to see if you can understand it.
   2. Modify the code to see what happens.
   3. Modify the code to change the way the game works.
9. Help another student find and fix a bug in a scenario that is giving them trouble.

Equipment and Software Requirements

• A projector to connect to a laptop for running leader activities so that everyone in class can see the projected screen at the same time.
• A computer, installed with the Java 5 or Java 6 SE Software Development Kit (SDK), for each student. See the system requirements for Greenfoot.
• A high-speed Internet connection for each student's computer.
• A high-speed Internet connection for the leader's laptop (MacBook Pro).
• A folder on the computer where Greenfoot can be downloaded for execution.
• (Optional) Students may bring a flash memory stick to use for saving games or taking them home to work on.

See Also

-- MarlaParker - 26 Jul 2008