In photography, you set up the boundary conditions, take a TON of pictures, then select the best ones from the ones you have. The best photographers have the best eye for selecting the remarkable ones out of the pack. This would shift game programming from an art like classical sculpture - where you have to plan far, far ahead, and don't get second chances - to an art like photography where it is more about creative curation than creative engineering. Evoluationary development of games wouldn't eliminate the creativity of the process or the product, it would change the creativity of the process and the product.
I work for a gifted/enrichment department at elementary and middle schools, so I've taught programming to ten to thirteen year olds a few times. I've tried Logo, Scratch, Alice, MIPS, Java (via BlueJ), and now Processing.
The best experiences I've had were using processing.
Processing is great for this age group because
1.) you get visual feedback right away
2.) the processing language has stages; it begins declarative and becomes object oriented. I had one student who eventually ended up using the processing library in pure java.
3.) if you like, you can do relatively low-level stuff, such as bit-twiddling on images
4.) while it isn't as easy as Scratch to publish results and collaborate online, it's very close, because of the site "openprocessing.org"
5.) contrary to what you'd expect, a language that requires typing is easier for younger kids to manipulate than a language that requires you to mouse around a lot (Alice and Scratch).
This year I used Daniel Shiffman's book "Learning Processing," and the kids really responded to it. I'd highly recommend it for teaching to this age group.
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In photography, you set up the boundary conditions, take a TON of pictures, then select the best ones from the ones you have. The best photographers have the best eye for selecting the remarkable ones out of the pack. This would shift game programming from an art like classical sculpture - where you have to plan far, far ahead, and don't get second chances - to an art like photography where it is more about creative curation than creative engineering. Evoluationary development of games wouldn't eliminate the creativity of the process or the product, it would change the creativity of the process and the product.
I work for a gifted/enrichment department at elementary and middle schools, so I've taught programming to ten to thirteen year olds a few times. I've tried Logo, Scratch, Alice, MIPS, Java (via BlueJ), and now Processing. The best experiences I've had were using processing. Processing is great for this age group because 1.) you get visual feedback right away 2.) the processing language has stages; it begins declarative and becomes object oriented. I had one student who eventually ended up using the processing library in pure java. 3.) if you like, you can do relatively low-level stuff, such as bit-twiddling on images 4.) while it isn't as easy as Scratch to publish results and collaborate online, it's very close, because of the site "openprocessing.org" 5.) contrary to what you'd expect, a language that requires typing is easier for younger kids to manipulate than a language that requires you to mouse around a lot (Alice and Scratch). This year I used Daniel Shiffman's book "Learning Processing," and the kids really responded to it. I'd highly recommend it for teaching to this age group.
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