The last two weeks have been great as I have been doing outreach sessions at Holy Family School and Bitterne Park Primary school. The classes had a challenge where they had a week to make a game with a learning objective. The majority wanted to teach people about their project on world war 2, healthy eating or maths problems. I allowed the pupils to use whatever language or tool they wanted as long as the game had a number of levels, was accessible and had a learning objective. The range of tools they used were: Scratch, Roblox, Kodu and Unity/Blender. Here is a summary of each tool and how they found it:
* Scratch: Scratch is a tool that the pupils had used before but not in any depth. Half of each class did not seem convinced by Scratch as they felt it was ‘babyish’. But understanding loops, variables and functions was great on this tool. It was also a good way of showing how loops worked. Those who used it, got a lot from it.
* Roblox: Roblox was a popular tool. It claims you can make a first person shooter in 15mins. Its true that it can be done but it is not the best to learn programming with as its more about creating a world with scenery. The programming side is based on Lua. Doing the scripting is not too difficult when pupils did it but to get any depth was difficult. I felt that at year 6, these students did not have the persistence to make it work. Whenever they came across a barrier, they seemed to give up and create a new world. By the end of the week they were getting better with persisting with the scripting. They were taught a new technique every day by me and the more they saw me do it, the more they persisted. The issue with Roblox is that it relies on a very good school network to make it work. The other issue is that it is open so students work was getting hacked and bad language was put on the screen by the hackers.
*Kodo: Kodu is the a tool created by Microsoft (so it won’t work on my mac). Its a 3d tool and there is the ability to do some scripting but it mainly works using flow charts and exploration of options. Students needed the most help on Kodu out of all the tools as the options were less intuitive but pupils were impressed with its graphics and were able to find helpful online tutorials.
*Blender/Unity: I had one pupil who decided to use Blender for this challenge. My experience of Blender is not as much as other peoples experience but I was able to help him a little bit. Its something that is popular with A-level students and Undergraduates so to see a year 6 student use it was a surprise. He used it well however, there were some aspect with Python he needed help with. The most helpful websites and tutorials were blocked on the school network. He finished making the game during the week which was impressive.
I have found that just because this age group might understand some aspects of scripting, programming and computing I do not think they are patient and persistent enough to keep going with it. They need intense help with a very experienced teacher in order to get an outcome they want. As these pupils play games they know what is possible and want to replicate what they have played.