Insights from a seasoned Computer Science Trainer
There are 60 entries for the tag
XNA
Well if you are, you won’t be soon when Microsoft takes down the YouTube video clone site. I just received the official announcement today via e-mail. I had a couple of XNA games that my students created on the site. Here’s the official word: Attention Soapbox Users, MSN will no longer offer Soapbox, the user generated video service within MSN Video, as of August 31, 2009. Beginning on July 29, you will no longer be able to upload videos to Soapbox. People who have uploaded videos to Soapbox will ......
Here's some free curriculum to use for training which is not that bad to use but interesting that it would use a product that they discontinued as part of the training. Unlimited Potential Community Learning Curriculum The Unlimited Potential Community Learning Curriculum provides the foundation for teaching basic to intermediate technology skills in a hands-on manner. Designed to be used in community technology centers (CTCs) or telecenters, the curriculum provides quality content focused on real-world ......
For the past ten months, I have been waiting and waiting sometimes patiently and sometimes not so patient for the DreamSpark program to be available to high school students. Back in February with a huge announcement by Bill Gates about the DreamSpark program, I have been waiting. So here's the program: The Microsoft DreamSpark student program www.DreamSpark.com makes available, at no charge, a broad range of development and design software for download. The program is now available to more than 35 ......
First of all, as a computer science trainer for many years, I'm biased to classroom training. As a trainer, you can see someone's eyes and determine if your students are learning concepts that you are teaching. I will adjust my presentation if needed so that the majority of the audience understands. There's always that minority that needs more help. Also, as a student, getting one on one help is the best way to learn. However, as you might know, there might not be a class in what you need to learn ......
There's a great line up of some Florida speakers coming to the MSDN Developers Conference next month at the Rosen Hotel across from the Convention Center. The line up includes well known Joe Healy and Russ Fustino speaking along with XNA, Silverlight expert Bill Reiss, my fellow co author of the DotNetNuke book, Stan Schultes, Academic Relations Manager for msft, Dan Waters. There are other Florida pro's like Bayer White , Christopher Bennage, and Joe Homnick that I hope I get to meet as well. Hope ......
I have been pursuing when high school students will be getting the free software that Microsoft promised with the DreamSpark announcement back in February. I finally have been communicating with the team that is in charge of this and I've been told not to announce the release date but only to tell you that it will be soon. Real soon! The distribution will be different from what college students have been doing. The high school computer science teacher must register. The high school administrators/faculty ......
Last February, Bill Gates announced a free software giveaway to college university students and high school students as well. Here is what was offered to them: Microsoft developer tools. Visual Studio is the Swiss Army knife of computer programming. These professional-grade products provide a security-enhanced and reliable environment, enabling students to program everything from a cell phone to a robot or to create their own Web page. Students will also be able to invent compelling new gaming content ......
So back in August, I blogged about this site because of my excitement for XNA and Academics. I was hoping to use whatever came on the site with my programming students. I was hoping that by now Microsoft either put content on the site or take it off and stop teasing us educators. To date nothing! Everyone is waiting patiently for content and I know one person who isn't waiting so patiently..... What gives? Technorati Tags: Microsoft, XNA, Academics, Creators Club ......
Microsoft MVP, Rob Miles has emailed all who are interested in reviewing his new XNA curriculum. I had a chance to look at Part 1 today and it looks good to use for any high school programming course that wants to introduce XNA into the curriculum. The curriculum will have a total of 8 parts: Part 1: An Introduction to ProgrammingPart 2: Controlling GamesPart 3: Displaying MessagesPart 4: Pictures and SoundsPart 5: A Complete GamePart 6: Creating GameplayPart 7: Complex Games Part 8: Multi Player ......
Microsoft MVP, Rob Miles is writing some XNA curriculum. YAAA! He write a good XNA book and he teaches at the University of Hull. His site called Very Silly Games made this announcement. Visit his site and send him an email to be put on a list. Technorati Tags: xna, curriculum ......
Not sure what's going to be on it because there's no content on it yet. Technorati Tags: xna Creators Club, xna ......
Video: LT's 1945 XNA Game ......
Video: Nick's Bird Shot XNA Game ......
Next week is the last week of teaching XNA Game Development to my students. My year long planning for the course has really paid off and I'm proud of the 2D games that my students created. All of the games were deployed on the XBOX 360 to show the game play. I've posted some of the games that they created and I hope you like them too. Here are some DO's and Don'ts when teaching XNA. Do's Stick with one version of XNA and use it for the Semester. Teach your students the art of game design. Prepare ......
Video: Jonathan's Monty Python XNA Game ......
Video: Paras XNA Helicopter ......
Video: Kyle's XNA SONIC GAME ......
Dan Waters , Academic Relations Manager from Microsoft Corporation, took the time out of his busy schedule to drive to Orlando today to speak to my XNA Programming Students about the new XNA Game Development Framework 3.0 that enables you to program games for the ZUNE. My students have been learning C# and XNA for this semester and are finishing up on their game development. Dan had the opportunity to answer student questions on Game State and he viewed the students games and made comments on each ......
Well, my advanced programming students finally have a 2d shooter game that they have almost completed. It's been fun watching the development of their games. Some students are tweaking their sprite graphic, some are adding different sounds. Dan Waters from Microsoft will be coming to speak to my students on Tuesday about the new XNA framework that will allow you to create a game for a Zune. Dan has a great blog on XNA and I used his resources during the semester. I have been experiencing deploying ......
Nearly 400 U.S. colleges and universities, including MIT and Carnegie Mellon, now offer formal training in game development, ranging from elective courses to full degree programs. The increasing complexity of computers and game systems requires teams of dozens of artists, producers, and programmers to create a game. "Twenty years ago, a game was made by one guy, or two or three people," says International Game Developers Association executive director Jason Della Rocca. "The games you see now take ......
Today was extremely busy and exhausting as well. The routine here is to wake up early, grab a boxed breakfast and coffee in the huge ballroom at the hotel and then run off to where the buses are parked to take you to the Redmond Microsoft campus. I scheduled meetings with some Microsoft personnel today along with poking my head into some of the sessions that were going on at the Conference Center. I continued to evangelize computer science education and spoke with interested people about the concerns ......
Well the weather in April is quite different than the weather in Orlando, FL at this time of year. However, I did notice that there is more color in the trees and plants even though it's cold. I spent most of the morning at an XNA workshop. Even though I'm an ASP.NET MVP, there are certain events that we can go to outside our area. It was interesting to listen to the XNA concerns that the MVP folks had. The speaker who is a senior manager mentioned XNA being used in colleges and that opened up the ......
I arrived early at the airport and met up with our Microsoft local leader Joe, Devfish, Healy. Joe was in high spirits banging away on his keyboard at 7 am! Joe drove from Tampa to Orlando to take the Alaskan Airlines direct flight to Seattle. Joe feels so committed to the MVP program that he makes sure he has money in his budget to go to this event and hook up with the user group leaders at this event. Shawn Weisfeld, a C# MVP and Onetug leader, was next to arrive at the gate. We all boarded the ......
My students have learned enough XNA for them to be able to create their own 2d game. They are ready and anxious. One of the requirements was for them to give me an idea of what the game will be and what will be the game play. So, as we start to develop these games, here's a list of what they will be doing: Helicopter Frenzy- The object of this game is for the player to make it pass all the enemies with a certain score. The players will need to be able to move and fire the helicopter at the same time. ......
Well, we are in the home stretch of our learning of XNA. We have used the excellent tutorial by Charles Cook that is located on the XNA creators club site. Beginner's Guide to XNA Game Studio Express This all-in-one tutorial is everything you need to get started with XNA Game Studio Express. Follow along with in-depth video tutorials with source code examples to learn how to create 2D and 3D games from scratch. I'm hoping this tutorial can get updated to XNA version 2. My students concentrated on ......
I really like it when students discover things on their own and get excited about their own learning. This week, my students have been modifying an existing XNA Pong game. They have just learned the concepts of putting sprites on the screen, moving sprites, and sprite collision. There were two games they could select and some selected the game Dan Waters put together on his blog and the other was from Bill Reiss. Basically, they had to change game play in the pong game. Some added more paddles, changed ......
For the past several weeks, my students have learned C# and started to learn XNA by reviewing the tutorial that Microsoft MVP Bill Reiss put together on his site. Today, we reviewed how to put sound into the game. The XNA Creators Club has a good video on this topic. I would highly recommend using the Sound.cs file that Bill uses in his tutorial for you to create your own sounds using XACT. You just need to change the namespace to the project you are working on and then initialize the sound under ......
Big announcement at the GDC in San Francisco today. Microsoft has launched a community driven service that will let amateur creators build and distribute games via XBOX live. I was amazed to find out that XNA had been downloaded 800,000 times and there are more than 400 universities worldwide that are using the package. There are not that many high schools teaching XNA. I'd like to see more XNA training for faculty so that high school teachers would feel comfortable teaching it. Last summer, I took ......
I'm sure that Alfred Thompson from Microsoft will be blogging more about this free giveaway. Great news if you are a college student you can get Visual Studio 2005 Professional Edition, Visual Studio 2008 Professional Edition, Expression Studio, XNA Game Studio 2.0 with a free year-long subscription to the XNA Creators Club, SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition and Windows Server 2003 R2 Standard Edition. When Windows Server 2008 is released to MSDN, it will be available to students as well. Bill Gates ......
Today in class, I shared with my students a video that Logan and Buzz did in their XNA online Programming class located at 3dbuzz.com. The training was excellent preparation for me to be able to teach my students game programing. My students have learned how to program in C# ,the basic concepts of decision making, repetition etc. and needed to see how all of this applies to game play so the Bouncing X video was needed at this time. There are 2 class files that are created in this application. One ......
Over at the creators club site is an online video tutorial entitled Beginner's Guide to XNA Game Studio Express that is new and will teach you how to create a 2d and 3d game. Charles Cox, a Developer Educator from Microsoft does an outstanding job at explaining how to code these two games. In addition, he reviews the hardware and operating system requirements of being able to run XNA Game Studio Express and how to install as well. What I liked was part of the Introduction steps you through how to ......
It's hard to believe that we started this class a month ago and we are moving along to finish the C# learning before we begin our adventure to learning XNA. Students are programming assignments utilizing the if statement. We reviewed the switch statement and how that is used as well. In addition, we covered webcast 3 overview of Game Elements that Digipen has available. This webcasts covers graphics, input, sounds and networks. My students only have time to program 2d games in XNA but I wanted to ......
All of my students went on a field trip today to visit the Orlando Science Center and participate in workshops that instructors from the Full Sail School in Winter Park, FL put on. The Instructors were extremely knowledgeable and had a great deal of patience answering questions from teenagers. The Science Center sponsored Otronicon over the weekend and the field trips were part of it. One workshop was on 3d modeling with Maya software and the other was on designing games using FPS Creator. Students ......
Today, I purchased my tickets to go to Seattle for the MVP Summit which will be held in April. The MVP Global Summit is a four-day invitation-only event hosted at the Washington State Trade and Convention Center in Seattle and at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington. With more than 400 sessions and a variety of networking opportunities, the MVP Global Summit enables Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) and Regional Directors (RDs) to: Connect with other MVPs and RDs Engage with Microsoft ......
Next week our class will be talking about the taxonomy of games. I showed students some XNA games and told them that we will be learning XNA by the end of February. Lots of C# learning ahead like decision making, repetition, classes, structs and arrays. Students will be learning about collision with the Brix Game that they are programming. They will replace some code to make the bricks disappear upon collision. Needless to say, the motivation of my students is up and we are moving forward. We have ......
When doing research for my XNA Game Programming class, I came across a great site that Jay Crossler has that had lecture slides that I could download and use in my class. One slide deck on the Theory of Fun will be used soon with my students. The slides review why are games not fun and how do we think. In addition, there's a section on how people choose games and reviews Bartle Personality Types. Finally, demographics are reviewed, time spent playing games, occupational status, what do players want ......
In my game programming class next week, my students will be learning about C# data types and working with variables. I have several small programs for them to program so that they feel comfortable programming in C# and working with the IDE. These are console applications and will be easy for them to master. The students will start to learn how to program a basic windows game called BRIX. Here's a description of the game. Game Design Overview As its name implies, this is a Windows-based game named ......
I am looking for student artists to create some game sprites that my students could possibly use in their game projects. Ideally, I'd like to create a public domain library of game sprites for anyone to download and use in their game. Full credit will be given to the designer. On that same note, I'm looking for student musicians to create game sound files that could be used in a game. These files would also be put in a public domain library. Please let me know if you can provide this to our game ......
I've only taught my Honors Programming II Game Programming class for 3 days now and I'm evaluating my students C# skills with various beginner programs. In addition, I am introducing Gaming concepts with my students using the free online book called The Art of Computer Game Design by Chris Crawford. I am also using some the Video Gaming Webcast that Microsoft has available with Matthew Mead who is a Computer Science Instructor from Digipen Institute of Technology. The Webcasts does not cover XNA ......
So today was our first day back to school after our Christmas break. We had meetings in the morning and we get the rest of the day to get ready for the next semester. I have 20 new pc's in my room so I needed to windows update each one along with installing the software for the xbox controller that the students will use in my XNA class. Here's a picture of the lab. I was able to write my lesson plans for each class that I'll be teaching and put the finishing touches on the Honors Programming II class. ......
Here is an outline of the Honors Programming II class that I'll be teaching next semester which begins next week. The curriculum that I'll be using for C# was written by Digipen and Microsoft. Introduction to C# C# Types & Variables C# Input & Output C# Expressions & Operators C# Functions & Flow Control C# Classes C# Arrays C# Structures The curriculum that I'll be using for some of the XNA training will come from Bill Reiss and Blue Rose Games. Introduction to XNA Getting Started ......
For over a year now, I've been busy learning XNA and then try to put together some curriculum for my Honors Programming II class to use. 3dbuzz has an excellent online class and. I would highly recommend their training. I am using moodle class management system with my students and it is a very convenient way of organizing a course. I'll be doing weekly blogs on the progress of the course . I am hoping more high school teachers would teach XNA to their students and we all can share games together. ......
Dan Waters who is the new Microsoft Academics Relations Manager for the Gulf States has a nice blog entry on creating your first XNA game that I plan on using with my high school programming students. Dan walks you through in his tutorial on how to create his version of a pong game. He does a good job explaining the code and how he used collision detection with his sprites as well. What I liked was a nice powerpoint presentation that you get when you download the source. Dan spent some time creating ......
It is great to see that Microsoft has selected some worth projects and has awarded lots of money for continued research on these areas. Here's the announcement: Microsoft Research announced on Monday that Microsoft will award almost $6.5 million in grants to colleges and universities across the United States to supplement research, research faculty, and research facilities. Microsoft Research's Rich Rashid said computer science impacts all types of work and industries, and investing in academia will ......
Back in February I blogged about me going to the Microsoft Academic Days on Game Development which was held in Orlando and on the Disney Wonder Ship which took us to the Bahamas. Several of the speakers have put up their slides from their presentation on the Academic Resource Center site. You can search for other information on the site as well. It is categorized like this: Special Collaboration Areas Compilers, Languages, Runtimes Robotics Embedded Systems Sensor Networks Gaming and Graphics Software ......
Yesterday I attended the Computer Science & Information Technology Symposium that was held at the Omni Hotel in Atlanta, Georgia. For the past several years, I've been a speaker at this event and this was the second time that I've attended as a registrant. I always look forward to this event because it gives me a chance to see some old friends and to meet new friends as well. In addition, it helps me learn new ways to teach computer science education. I attended sessions on robotics, the Grid ......
As a kid, I always had fond memories of my Dad throwing me a popfly ball and catching it. That was fun! Even with my own kids, I enjoyed throwing a popfly ball to them and smiled when they caught it. So, when I was invited to join up with Microsoft Popfly, I had a hunch it would be fun and it is. Popfly Space is a social network designed to connect the millions of non-professional creators in the world who work on everything from mashups to game development to hardware hacks. Users can build and ......
I finally put the finishing touches on the course that I'll be teaching next school year on game programming. This will be an 18 week course for students who are experienced at programming and have taken our Honors level Programming course. I plan on using the online book The Art of Computer Game Design by Chris Crawford. The book is a short read but covers some key points such as: What is a Game? Why do People Play Games A Taxonomy of Computer Games The Computer as a Game Technology The Game Design ......
After waiting several months now, I finally got my hands on this new book. The author has a nice blog on game development and he has created a series of videos on game development in directx where he created the rocket commander game. I'm hoping that Benjamin can create the videos on how he created the rocket commander game with XNA. One bonus for this book is that it's not just about coding games using XNA. The author adds input to his own experiences on creating games and emphasizes making a plan ......
There is always some time left after the AP exam to teach our students more before we leave them for the summer. In Florida, we have a couple of weeks to learn more and if you’re from different parts of the country you may have even more time to teach students something new. I am really sold on having students learn about creating games so that’s what I’ll be doing with my students. There are several options available for you to do with your students and several languages to use as well. If you want ......
In preparation for the gaming course that I'll be teaching next school year, I came across these interesting facts about the industry that is put out by the Entertainment Software Association: TOP 10 INDUSTRY FACTS US computer and video game software sales grew six percent in 2006 to $7.4 billion – almost tripling industry software sales since 1996. Sixty-nine percent of American heads of households play computer and video games. The average game player is 33 years old and has been playing games ......
Alfred Thompson, a former high school computer science teacher and now a Microsoft employee, blogged today on taking a look at AP Computer Science. Quite timely I thought even after I posed this question last week to Microsoft boss Bill Gates, "Is computer science education dead". Quite timely indeed even after I said something to my Associate Director here at school on Friday about how frustrated I am teaching AP Computer Science and that when our school hires another Computer Science Teacher next ......
By SETH SCHIESEL Reaching out to millions of aspiring game developers around the world, Microsoft plans today to announce a contest that will award $10,000 and the opportunity to entice millions of eyeballs to the next great digital diversion for the company’s Xbox 360. In addition to the game console’s snazzy graphics, the Xbox Live online service has been the most important component of the Xbox 360’s success since its debut in 2005. And perhaps the most popular aspect of Xbox Live has been the ......
Alfred Thompson who works for Microsoft invited me to go to this event. Alfred is a former high school computer science teacher and I worked with him on the Microsoft Faculty Advisory Board. He works hard promoting high school programming for his company. So why the AHOY? Well, this event is on the Disney Wonder Ship and it sails to Nasseau, Bahamas and the Disney Castaway Island. I'm sure you think that I'll be getting a good tan during my time there but the agenda is packed with interesting speakers ......
The 2nd semester of the school year starts next week after a two week hiatus to rest, relax, and be with family. Most of my classes are semester long classes so I get a chance to meet new students when I go back to school next week. My AP students will be the same and there's always pressure with that class to meet the goals of the AP curriculum and prepare them for the AP exam in early May. They have much more to learn in OOP like inheritance, polymorphism, and they need to learn about recursion ......
At Lake Highland Prep in Orlando, FL, we'll be celebrating Computer Science Education in a couple of ways. I have some outstanding guest speakers that will be visiting our school and talking to our students. Scott Faris will be talking to my AP class about his company. Mrs. Frank who runs a very successful online business selling childrens clothes will be coming in to speak to my Web Design class. Finally, Joe Healy, from Microsoft will be bringing Bill Reiss from Tampa to speak to my Honors Programming ......
I have posted a new page on my website at sws.lhps.org. The page is called XNA Development for students. On the page will be assignments that my students will be working on along with links to terrific XNA sites. I'm optimitic that my students can continue their learning in the AP class and juggle learning XNA as well. Maybe I'm too much of an optimist?
I'll be blogging later.
FREE XNA Book by Mike Fleischauer Another good resource is learnxna.com. They have some video tutorials to review along with a book that Mike Fleischauer is writing and posting chapters on the site that he’s written along with code samples as well. The book is an easy read with less than twenty pages each chapter. The first chapter reviews the basics of XNA and is a good introduction to using Visual C# Express. Chapter 2 reviews graphics and sprites. He does an excellent job reviewing transparent ......
In my search to learn more about XNA programming, I came across a good site on game programming with JAVA. Now you might be asking what does XNA programming have to do with JAVA programming. Right? Well, what's nice about this site is that you can learn more about game design and learn about the basics of graphics as well. The section on the basics of sound was very good. The site is worth taking a look at if you're interested in learning about game programming ......
Let me start by saying that I'm always a sucker to new techniques, platforms, and ideas to teach my students about programming. I'm also trying to increase my enrollment as well. I have used web programming for a couple of years including web services. I introduced them to game programming using Gamemaker and Blitz Basic several years ago and now this new XNA framework is available to use in the class. I have downloaded the framework and just started to look at the code which is in C#. A good start ......