[game_edu] what to do in a technical high school programming shop

[Jim Peters]

Just wandered in last week...

Though I've been paying attention to the gaming industry in  
Massachusetts via the Boston Post Mortem group, which is also the IGDA  
Boston chapter,  I am just reaching the end of my first year of  
teaching high school students at a vocational technical school in  
central MA.  It wasn't too long ago that this shop was called Data  
Processing and the sign in the lobby still lists it.   Since the  
students  tune in strongly to career ideas with the phrase of "game  
development"  I'm looking for ideas for one of the last weeks of  
school.    I discovered this mailing list and joined last week while  
perusing the IGDA's career area and plan to use the article "So you  
want to be a game developer".

For me this is a mid-career switch into teaching and with the age  
group I want to work with.   My prior experience is as a software  
engineer working in Unix environments on embedded systems and with  
network management systems.    That's my 90's and early 2000's job  
summary.   School was the 80's.  (Wil Wheaton is my Geeky hero).  For  
the last five years I've been tuning into the (local) gaming industry  
and have ended up doing this transition to teaching.   Landing at a  
gaming company just hasn't  yet happened.

What I observe about the kids is that they have the enthusiasm but  
lack any level of programming skill.   Most of my course books comes  
from the Course.com companies.    Its pretty good, and they have a  
wide range of books and topics. or series.  I want to incorporate  
gaming but really need to teach fundamental programming.   I'll leave  
the heavy duty CS stuff for college.

Alice and Visual Basic are our vehicles for the first two years.    
 From there we go to Javascript, Java and C++.   Of course since we're  
also Web Development, we do HTML and Access -- all in OOP.

I'm off to a Mass Teacher's Association (the union) conference for new  
teachers in August so hopefully I'll pick up some ideas and do some  
networking.  I also expect to make Boston Post Mortem meetings in July  
and August.   Maybe June.

In all, I'm looking for ideas.

Thanks,

Jim Peters

Jim Peters
jpeters at jadrien.com

vocational technical teacher in Programming and Web Design at Bay Path  
Regional Technical High School
formerly a release and software engineer in sustaining.   also a  
capable graphic designer.