[Edu-sig] Playing games

[kirby urner]

On 9/21/06, Arthur <ajsiegel at optonline.net> wrote:

> As usual in these discussions, the Microsoft stance relies - at it s
> essence - on maintaining ambiguity about whether we are talking about
> playing games, or the demanding (I can't do it, for example) notion of
> writing them. And is in this respect is -at its essence - dishonest.

Our 23 year old Saturday Academy is making good use of Game Maker,
which about programming games, then playing them, the programming some
more.

We have more sections devoted to Game Maker (based on student demand)
than anything else in the catalog.

http://www.gamemaker.nl/
http://www.saturdayacademy.org/classes/ViewAll.aspx

This same software is now a focus when teachers gather under the
auspices of Software Association of Oregon.

Here's an example of a Silicon Forest executive teaching Game Maker in
his spare time (also Ruby on Rails):
http://pdx.techevents.info/codecamp/2/PresenterInfo.aspx?ID=91a87e81-7ac5-4784-9099-63b2576868b4

Game Maker features a lot of drag and drop, but there's lexical
(so-called line by line) programming involved as well.  From the demos
I've seen, it does build computer scientist type thinking in its
students.

We've discussed Game Maker on this list before e.g.:
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/edu-sig/2004-November/004123.html

BTW, here's a link to my class (Pythonic mathematics):
http://www.saturdayacademy.org/classes/ClassDetail.aspx?id=7571

Kirby