[squeakland] Re: squeakland Digest, Vol
82, Issue 2
kharness at illinois.edu
kharness at illinois.edu
Tue Feb 2 07:30:46 EST 2010
Steve,
I don't know if you have had time to look at the projects on the EtoysIllinois web site. www.EtoysIllinois.org There are two collections of projects with lesson plans you may be interested in seeing. CS4K5 has a pinball game project/lesson as well as lessons for several other easy games and puzzles that I have used with young students. The dot to dot game is very easy and children enjoy making it and playing it long after the lesson is done. The Sudoku puzzles are also a project that has lasting interest.
You can see dozens of student examples of mazes, sudoku, tetrominoes, puzzles, and races that are tagged in the collection. There are student's books about science topics they were studying. The Counting Books were written by students to teach their younger brothers and sisters how to count and make delightful projects where students can apply the Etoys knowledge they have to meet the needs of younger students. There are over 800 projects that were made by students in the site that can be used as they are or can be taken apart to see how they work. None of the scripts are locked and I encourage students to take projects apart to learn from them.
The other set of lesson plans accompany the K-5 Technology Passport projects. Click on a project to select it and the lesson materials will be a link in the new window. These projects are aligned with grade level core curriculum standards. I live in Illinois and so used Illinois standards which closely follow the ones developed by NCTM, NSTA, NETS, and NCTM.
Many of Avigail Snir's projects include teaching materials within the project either in a book or a flap. If you use the Search tool in the site, her projects will be listed.
Regards,
Kathleen
---- Original message ----
>Date: Tue, 2 Feb 2010 01:58:55 -0500
>From: Steve Thomas <sthomas1 at gosargon.com>
>Subject: [squeakland] Re: squeakland Digest, Vol 82, Issue 2
>To: Cherry Withers <cwithers at ekindling.org>
>Cc: squeakland <squeakland at squeakland.org>
>
> Whichever motivates them most.
>
> Pinball, hmmm great idea. Would appreciate it if
> you could share lesson plans/projects.
>
> Stephen
>
> On Tue, Feb 2, 2010 at 1:55 AM, Cherry Withers
> <cwithers at ekindling.org> wrote:
>
> Wow! Thanks everyone! hmmnn...weird that I didn't
> get Bert and Scott's reply in my in-box nor is it
> indicated as a replies in the Squeakland community
> forum index.
>
> Steve the project and the step-by-step information
> are most helpful! Thank you! My students are
> basically done with their maze games but I'm
> debating whether to introduce this added
> complexity by request from a couple of them or
> move on and teach a pinball game for the last two
> sessions of my class.
>
> Thanks,
> Cherry
> On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 10:29 PM, Steve Thomas
> <sthomas1 at gosargon.com> wrote:
>
> Cherry,
>
> Attached is a Etoys Project (still in progress)
> that demonstrates the same thing Scott had
> suggested along with some questions and Teacher
> notes (this is very rough and still needs a lot
> of work, but good enough so that you should get
> the idea.
>
> Some thoughts on teaching two player game
> creation:
> * They will notice problems when one child
> holds down their control key and the other
> just keeps "tapping" thier control keys, the
> child who taps will win. See if you can
> observe this and ask the kids why "Cherry"
> always wins? What is she doing differently?
> Hopefully they will notice the tapping vs
> holding down the key, if not you can help
> them make that observation. Then ask why
> that matters? How do they think the computer
> works? How and when does the keyboard send
> signals to indicate which key is being
> input? The kids may come up with two
> answers: 1) it sends a signal as long as the
> key is held down 2) it sends a signal each
> time the key is held down. IF you are lucky
> enough to get both answers, ask: How can we
> test which method the keyboards use? What
> can you observe and what results would you
> expect if it only sends the signal one time
> when a key is pressed? What would you
> observe and what would you expect the
> results to be if it kept sending signals
> constantly as long as a key was held down?
> Then: "Well your scientists, go forth and
> test your hypotheses!"
> * If it is a racing game, most kids I have
> seen implement with basic go forward and go
> backward and don't program in acceleration
> and "braking". You may want to ask them the
> questions on page 5 of the attached project
> to suggest they try acceleration and
> braking.
> * Rather than showing them the project you may
> want to try questioning them into it (Note:
> this may not be easy I have tried and not
> always succeeded with this one) some
> thoughts on questions and things you can
> show:
> * Start by mentioning/showing them about
> variables, then ask: How can we use a
> variable to capture the direction
> someone wants to go in? How many
> variables will we need.
> * Then ask: How can you use that variable
> you have just defined in a script to
> control the car's movement?
> * Note: the method I showed in the attached
> project is probably not the method the kids
> will use, they most likely will do a group
> of tests on the variable and move
> accordingly.
> * You can also ask what else a variable can be
> used for in a games (as part of
> brainstorming) ex: score, # of lives a
> player has left, timer (FYI, to implement a
> timer, use the tick rate and a variable that
> counts up to track how long something takes
> or counts down if they only have so long to
> complete a task).
> Lastly I would love it if you could share your
> observations on the two player game creation and
> any interesting projects the kids might create.
>
> Stephen
>
> Message: 2
>
> Date: Mon, 01 Feb 2010 22:35:06 -0500
> From: "CherryW"
> <squeakland-forum at squeakland.org>
> Subject: [squeakland] How to create a
> multi-player game
> To: squeakland at squeakland.org
> Message-ID:
> <1265081706.m2f.19304 at squeakland.org/forums>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Hello,
>
> My students are asking if it's possible to
> have multiple players in their games. They've
> programmed ObjectA and ObjectB to each have
> different sets of keyboard inputs. The problem
> is pressing keyboard inputs for ObjectA stops
> the movement of ObjectB and vice versa. Anyway
> to do bypass this problem?
>
> Thank you!
> ---Cherry
>
> -------------------- m2f --------------------
>
> (from forum)
> http://squeakland.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=19304#19304
>
> -------------------- m2f --------------------
>
> -------------- next part --------------
> An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
> URL:
> http://lists.squeakland.org/pipermail/squeakland/attachments/20100201/ed89ffad/attachment-0001.html
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 3
> Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 20:43:50 -0800
> From: Bert Freudenberg <bert at freudenbergs.de>
> Subject: Re: [squeakland] How to create a
> multi-player game
> To: squeakland at squeakland.org
> Message-ID:
> <31F10548-45F0-4DBF-9392-332BE66E8B7B at freudenbergs.de>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> On 01.02.2010, at 19:35, CherryW wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > My students are asking if it's possible to
> have multiple players in their games. They've
> programmed ObjectA and ObjectB to each have
> different sets of keyboard inputs. The problem
> is pressing keyboard inputs for ObjectA stops
> the movement of ObjectB and vice versa. Anyway
> to do bypass this problem?
> >
> > Thank you!
> > ---Cherry
>
> Not easily. Maybe one player can use the
> keyboard and another one a joystick?
>
> A more general solution would be this:
> http://tracker.squeakland.org/browse/SQ-331
>
> - Bert -
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Mon, 1 Feb 2010 21:09:31 -0800
> From: Scott Wallace
> <scott.wallace at squeakland.org>
> Subject: Re: [squeakland] How to create a
> multi-player game
> To: squeakland at squeakland.org
> Message-ID:
> <DF73943D-D5FE-4837-AEF1-CF40C693E745 at squeakland.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> On Feb 1, 2010, at 7:35 PM, CherryW wrote:
>
> > Hello,
> >
> > My students are asking if it's possible to
> have multiple players in their games. They've
> programmed ObjectA and ObjectB to each have
> different sets of keyboard inputs. The problem
> is pressing keyboard inputs for ObjectA stops
> the movement of ObjectB and vice versa. Anyway
> to do bypass this problem?
> >
> > Thank you!
> > ---Cherry
>
> Hi, Cherry,
>
> One way is to have each an object's behavior
> governed not directly by "world's last
> keystroke" but rather by its own private
> variable telling it what "state" it is in, and
> hence what it should do. This can be
> accomplished by devoting one ticking script in
> each object to maintaing the object's "state";
> this script can "watch" the world's last
> keystroke, and when it sees a keystroke that
> means something to it, it sets the
> corresponding state in the object's state
> variable, whereas when it sees keystrokes
> intended to control different objects, it
> ignores them; and devoting a second, separate,
> ticking script in each object to carrying out
> the action represented by the current "state".
>
> The attached project provides a simple
> illustration of this. It allows two objects
> to be navigated from the keyboard. Each
> object is looking for a different set of keys.
>
> A diamond-shaped cluster of four keys at the
> left edge of the keyboard is used to control
> Red:
>
> a rotate counterclockwise
> s rotate clockwise
> w go forward
> z go backward
>
> A second diamond-shaped cluster of four keys
> further to the right is used to control Blue:
>
> j rotate counterclockwise
> k rotate clockwise
> i go forward
> m go backward
>
> HTH...
>
> -- Scott
>
> -------------- next part --------------
> A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
> Name: twoPlayerGame-sw.001.pr
> Type: application/octet-stream
> Size: 142056 bytes
> Desc: not available
> Url :
> http://lists.squeakland.org/pipermail/squeakland/attachments/20100201/98638dd2/twoPlayerGame-sw.001.obj
>
> ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> squeakland mailing list
> squeakland at squeakland.org
> http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland
>
> End of squeakland Digest, Vol 82, Issue 2
> *****************************************
>________________
>_______________________________________________
>squeakland mailing list
>squeakland at squeakland.org
>http://lists.squeakland.org/mailman/listinfo/squeakland
More information about the squeakland
mailing list