Computer Science and Games Based Learning

Touch Develop

Recently in the UK the curriculum has been changing. In ICT a lot of the changes are moving towards getting students to start computer programming rather than word processing and the analysis of presentation. The government would like students to start building applications and they would like them to understand how the computer works.

Many of the changes are worrying for some teachers due to their background in business or alternatives. I recently got a bunch of students together to see whether they would have interest in the new curriculum and the way I did this was through teaching them how to make mobile phone / windows 8 games. There is a worry that only mathematical thinkers would be able to do this but I can say after trailing this that it's not the case. I had a real mixture of students.

I developed a scheme of work which allowed students to learn the basics of programming but it would also show them how to get images, text and sounds interacting or updating. The students were really interested in this and it is a great new way of using gaming to stimulate their learning. During the course of the project the students would play games and we would discuss age ratings and ethics involved. It also encouraged the students to think about the importance of testing and there were ethics involved. Students were able to pick my own games a part and they were able to understand them clearly and they understood co-ordinates in a stronger way.

The most impressive thing for me was to see the students go out of their way to interview teachers and ask them about requirements. They were taking it on themselves and testing the application with the teachers to see whether it was suitable.

You can download one of my students applications here - > Muscle P.E G.C.S.E Revision Application...

It was a huge success and I have a few other students in the middle of buiding their applications at the moment. The links below will allow you to read more about the project and you can find out how to teach your students how to make some gaming applications for the windows 8 store.

Touch Develop Scheme of work..

Touch Develop Video Tutorials...