Submitted by Kenneth Rosenberg on the 2017 winter session program in New Zealand sponsored by the Department of Computer and Information Sciences…
I wanted to spend a little time talking about the goal of our trip. We came to New Zealand to join in the University of Canterbury’s efforts in improving the computer science education of young kids. I elected not to take the field experience in teaching technology class since I took it this past semester, but we were all engaged in this process.
We visited Nelson last week and held a three day long workshop with students, campers and pop-ins who wanted to learn more about computer science. The culmination of the workshop was a day-long hack-a-thon where we acted as mentors for kids ranging from about 8-16 years old. I was extremely impressed by what the kids were able to accomplish in only a few hours. My group was able to make an adventure game about a potato, including some very funny animations. Other groups were able to help the older kids create games in Unreal Engine that touched on some heavy ideas like depression or gender identity. I look back to my time in a STEM high school in Delaware this past semester and think more than ever that those kids need to be pushed even harder. Some of these kids, age in the single digits, were able to out-code sophomores. I think this has more to do with setting expectations and creating a fun and creative environment.
Most of the students on our program were also in the Educational Game Design class and were charged with adding to the computer science field guide created by the University of Canterbury. We were asked to create games that help teach a computer science concept. My team worked on the idea that interfaces should remain consistent and demonstrated the confusion associated with violating this rule. We created a survival platform game where the controls change while you play. We demoed the games this morning for the graduate students in charge of the database and my team’s game was selected as one of the few that are likely to end up in the classroom tool. It is exciting to see that my work could reinforce the good work they are already doing here. I’m also interested to see what kinds of modifications and improvements their team here will make with more time on their hands.
One picture is of a child presenting his game to a full crowd at the end of our hack-a-thon and the other is a poster I created for our game when we took the computers to the mall for play-testing.
