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Learning to Code with a Boardgame
markmcb writes "While some of us cling tight to our memories of Apple-filled classrooms playing The Oregon Trail and driving our Turtle around in Logo, children today have many other ways to learn about the inner-working of computers and the code that drives them. Wired.com is running an interesting article about a boardgame in which players must use simple logic similar to that used in programming to get their skier down the mountain. From the article: 'Using basic math, players have to figure out which paths are open to them and then decide the fastest way to the finish line. The trick, however, is learning which paths are open to you using only programmer jargon like 'if (X==1)' then you can take the green path or 'while (X4) you can take the orange path,' where X is the roll of the die.'"
Also try Robo Rally. Of course, this deals with how to program a computer with a VERY limited instruction set, and with damaged hardware. :)
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There are fifty differnt robot kits floating about. They are much more entertaining and probably can help people program just as much as a boring board game.
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
*Of course this omits thre pretty pictures*
c-jump: Ski & Snowboard Race
Discover fundamentals of computer programming by playing a board game!
c-jump helps children to learn basics of programming languages, such as C, C++ and Java.
Players:
2 to 4 players
Ages:
11+
Object Of The Game:
First player to move all skiers past the FINISH line is the winner!
Equipment:
One game board, one die, and sets of colored pawns representing skiers and snowboarders for each player.
Great and unique learning game for kids! It teaches the child basic commands of a programming language, such as "if", "else", "switch", and introduces variable "x" concept.
The child calculates number of steps in the move, including addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication of small numbers. The game helps to develop understanding of a complete computer program, formed by logical sequences of commands.
This game eliminates intimidation of many kids and their parents, bored by the mention of "computer programming", often associated with visions of geeky guys glued to their computers. c-jump reveals simple programming terms in a cool way!
By moving around the board , entering loops, branching under conditional and switch statements, the players gain physical experience of a complete program. Understanding of the internal action of a computer is essential to understanding what software is. Static program causes dynamic process in the computer. By playing the game, players see this process as physical and spacial motion.
c-jump facts:
This game is not only about teaching and learning: it's fun and entertainment for the whole family!
Skiing and snowboarding is a perfect programming analogy.
c-jump game is ideal for home school education.
The game is based on the code of a real computer program!
Proceedings of our business support Common Text Transformation Library, an open source programming project on the internet. Please feel free to visit and download!
US Patent 6,135,451
© 1997-2005 Igor Kholodov
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
Here are the rules, in case people want to check the game out further.
One of my favorite early computer toys was the CARDIAC, the Bell Labs "Cardboard Aid to Computation," and I was hoping that this board game might re-create some of that excitement for today's kids. I liked the concept, but was a little dismayed by the attention to syntax. I'm more of the "Syntactic sugar leads to cancer of the semicolon" school of thought.
I worked on the Logo implementations for the Apple ][ at the MIT Logo lab, and at Terrapin did the Commodore 64 (and other ill-fated Commodore computers), Macintosh. (I also various implementations and translations for Japan, Spain, France, and Germany.)
We used LOGO on an Apple IIe and we liked it!
:D
That little turtle moving all over the scren to make what were essentially spirograph pictures? Back then that was state of the art shit, boy.
Made learning programming reasonably simple too, since you learned to think in terms of the algorithim. Also taught trig, since you had to deal with angles all the freakin time. But it worked, by gum!
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
For slightly younger people, there's Rocky's Boots made by the same people (The Learning Company). It teaches a lot of the same things, but in an easier (and cuter) style.
All you need is an Apple II emulator like AppleWin and you're all set!
Changed a bit since it was being beta tested in 1996 and even more difficult getting 3 other programmer kids to play...
l
http://www.sierramadregames.com/smg/robotanks.htm
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
I thought of (and googled for) Robo Rally too when I saw the article, and it appears that they've reissued the game, which had been most lamentably out of print for 4 or 5 years.
Still costs around 50 bucks, but IMO definitely worth it.
http://www.wizards.com/roborally/
There was a game way back when on the Atari2600 called "Rocky's Boots" that presented sorting problems of objects on a conveyor belt in various factory situations.
The player took mechanizms like "not" and "or" and characteristics "round" or "filled" to make logic that would operate to sort the things.
It was a great game. I have not seen anything quite like it since.