[Year 12 SofDev] Gamemaker

Thu Sep 13 09:36:24 EST 2007

Hi Tony,

I agree with you on the efficacy of GameMaker to engage and teach students. I teach Gamemaker at year 9 and 10 and I find that by Year 10, students are wanting to write sophisticated games that require scripting to achieve their ends.  They become so interested and absorbed in solving game problems that they end up learning a lot about programming. I have some students that spend a whole term developing a single game - with fabulous results.  Most of my interested gameMaker students are now enthused about IT and the sorts of things they can do with computers and are taking their thirst for knowledge home and using Internet tutorials to speed up their learning. Most of these students have also enrolled in Year 11 IT. 
Engagement is vital for real learning. I have never heard one of my GameMaker students ask "what do we need to learn this for?"

Cheers
Fiona Mackenzie
Leongatha Secondary College

>>> "Tony Forster" <forster at ozonline.com.au> 09/11/07 12:35 PM >>>
David

I have been a strong supporter of Game Maker for the last 5 years. It is 
because of GameMaker that I have any involvement in the education sector.

However, I see fun and falling ITS enrolments as poor grounds for choice of 
content. The fun is of little merit in itself unless it leads to deeper 
engagement and deeper thinking. Falling enrolments sounds too much like 
empire building for me to follow that line.

Programming languages such as Game Maker can well be justified on their 
actual merits as learning environments. Game Maker, as well as being "low 
entry" is "high ceiling". Its scripting language supports the usual control 
structures, for, if, while etc. Arrays, stacks, queues, lists, maps and 
grids are supported. It is the equal of the currently authorised languages 
in terms of top end capability. It is able to provide a good grounding for 
tertiary study of IT.

Because of its "fun", or more specifically the relevance and authenticity of 
the tasks that can be undertaken, there is a high level of engagement. This 
engagement leads to creative working with difficult problems and deep 
thinking. The traditional "create a database for your CD collection" task is 
more likely to result in superficial thinking and recipe book approaches. 
Game Maker lends itself to multidisciplinary learning, I believe it is 
likely to produce more creative and versatile thinkers.

Game Maker is able to do the traditional tasks of databases and GUI's though 
I have reservations on why we would subject students to such mindless tasks.

Though not an argument that I like to make too much of, there is also a 
career path for games. The computer games industry now exceeds the film 
industry and growing and there is a mad scramble at the tertiary level to 
offer games courses.

Tony Forster
http://www.schoolgamemaker.rupert.id.au/

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David Dawson" <David.Dawson at wesleycollege.net>
To: <sofdev at edulists.com.au>
Sent: Tuesday, September 11, 2007 10:44 AM
Subject: Re: [Year 12 SofDev] Gamemaker

> The VITTA Gamemaker sessions actually begs the question:
> Should Gamemaker or other gaming software now be introduced into the yr
> 12 ITS course.
> I have previously not been that keen - however, progmatically. with
> falling enrolments - perhaps the students are voting with their feet and
> would pick up this subject if it was seen as more *fun*.
> What do others think?
> What chance the VCAA would accept new languages for next year?
> David Dawson
> Association Inc
>
> David Dawson
> Head of Information Technology
> Head of Learning Technologies
> St.Kilda Rd Campus
> Wesley College, Melbourne
> Wk 8102 6340
>
>
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