[game_edu] An Introduction and UK BTEC National Diploma

[Kim Blake]

Hi Darren,

I'm education liaison for Blitz Games Studios; we try to do as much as possible to work with the education sector in the UK to improve available courses. I'm also involved with the Next Gen Skills campaign, trying to get the recommendations of the Livingstone-Hope Next Gen report implemented (http://www.nesta.org.uk/publications/assets/features/next_gen).

I don't know how useful they will be to you but there are some links to various resources on the Resources page on our www.BlitzAcademy.com site. I'd really welcome feedback actually, as I want to make it more useful to teachers as well as to potential students.

Also, please follow us on Twitter where I am trying to gather a community of people teaching games-related courses at all levels! @BlitzAcademy

I'm always happy to chat via email or whatever.

Thanks,
Kim

-----Original Message-----
From: game_edu-bounces at igda.org [mailto:game_edu-bounces at igda.org] On Behalf Of Darren Christie
Sent: 06 September 2011 07:24
To: game_edu at igda.org
Subject: [game_edu] An Introduction and UK BTEC National Diploma

Hi,
Relatively new to the list, just wanted to ask are there any others on here teaching the BTEC National Diploma in the UK, and in particular the following units:
Games Programming
Games Design
Mathematics for IT Practitioners
Event Programming
and OOP

If so which language are you using? What text books? 
First time I'm teaching the units above, and I'm trying to give them all a gaming bias. We are using C# and XNA 4.
For the game design I'm using the Game Design Workshop, Level Up! and Challenges for Game Designers. 
For the games programming the main book I am using is Learning XNA 4
And for the Event and OOP using C# for Students. 
I have some others I am using for ideas for just certain chapters which if folks are interested I will list. But so far the above are my main go to books.

I would really love to swap ideas with those teaching these units, or similar ones on what they have found works well in the classroom.

One of the ideas I had for the Games Programming for the game they have to produce was to give the students a theme to base their game round, abit like a game jam. Thought this would get round the "I don't know what to do a game about, and hopefully avoid a lot of zombie based games". 

Well thats a lot for an opening email to the list. Hope to hear from you 

Darren Christie





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