Programming with ActionScript in Yr 10

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Programming with ActionScript in Yr 10 Kevork
Krozian, Forest Hill College k.krozian_at_fhc.vic.e
du.au
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Session Objectives

• To share the experience of a new approach to
  teaching Programming in Year 10
• To discuss student successes, responses and
  reactions
• To share and support others venturing into this
  area
• Any other ideas

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What did students do previously?

• Students did VB.NET and VB6 prior to that for
  many years
• Subject was very rigid, mathematical, highly
  structured, incremental with regular testing,
  hugging the VB texts in the market. Eg. A form to
  calculate the pizza order based on toppings, the
  volume of a sphere, temperature conversion C to F
  etc
• Heavy documentation, problem definition,
  algorithmic representation with NS diagrams
  before a line of code could be written, strict
  adherence to achieving a quota of exercises
• Final project requirement and student
  presentation to class was required

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Why the departure from this setting ?

• Students were 50-50 internationals to locals.
• Internationals had little English so heavy
  documentation was not going to work
• A desire to move away from the documentation
  regardless
• A more web friendly, multimedia focused
  environment was sought
• A high level of artistic and spatial skill set
  was a strength with Flash and ActionScript in
  addition to writing code
• The old VET Cert III Multimedia course was the
  starting point for ideas, tasks and activities

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Delivery Structure
MyFHC Intranet
Course Outline Task list
Journal kept recording learning experience,
reflection, discoveries, problems etc
Assessment based on total number of tasks
completed and level of departure from the script
as well as independent learning
Reporting rubrics descriptors transfer to
report and VELS level
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Why the change ?
Focus on the Thinking Curriculum

• Learning centred vs teacher ( teaching ) centred
• Process driven vs content driven
• Students setting own questions vs students
  answering only others questions
• Shared experiences and learning vs private
  thought processes
• Developing independent, critical, creative and
  caring learners
• More just in time vs just in case learning
• Mistakes to be learned from vs mistakes to be
  avoided or feared
• Teacher fellow learner/collaborator vs expert

Focus on the constructionists model students
learn by creating

• more meaningful and transferable learning will
  result when students are given opportunities to
  construct knowledge from their own point of view
• Different options for selecting project topics
• Training students
• Collecting information
• Scaffolding process
• Organising
• Evaluation
• Assessment

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Why and what change ?
Teaching to, and awareness of, multiple
intelligences

• Linguistic intelligence
• Logical-mathematical intelligence
• Musical intelligence
• Bodily-kinesthetic intelligence
• Spatial intelligence
• Interpersonal intelligence
• Intrapersonal intelligence

Enhancing application of learning beyond classroom

• College web site to feature a splash screen in
  Flash/actionscript to be maintained through
  student work
• Exemplary tasks to also feature on a Current
  student work section of College web site

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Current Year 10
Programming Elective 1 semester only 3 x
(72min) periods per week
Course Details Comments/Rationale
Flash and Actionscript Journal online (Moodle) for reflection and record keeping Up to 20 graded learning activities covering layout, graphics, colours, fonts, naming conventions, use of Actionscript 2.0 and 3.0 Refresher activities from Yr 9 Adding sounds to movies Path orientation Drawing in Flash Buttons and movies Compositing or Nesting 3D Effects in Flash A runner in Flash First Actionscript Mouse control ( AS 2.0 and 3.0) Keyboard control, screen wrapping Collision detection Jigsaw puzzle ( can be Quiz type ) Colouring car parts Scrolling space background Saving the Earth shooting game A choice of projects such as a poker machine or billiards game or car racing game or other Journal required as part of the reflection Peer evaluation required on any improvements after task completion Very engaging Students rarely off task Individual discussion and tailoring extension work Excellent skill development at VELS Level 6 as .. students apply a range of techniques, equipment and procedures that minimise the cost, effort and time of processing ICT solutions and maximise the accuracy, clarity and completeness of the information. Their products demonstrate a clear sense of purpose and respect for the audience Aim is to gain confidence in taking on challenges rather than racing to finish a product Process of learning is the focus rather than the answer to a problem though we celebrate discovery of a solution Debugging competitions first to find error gets a chocolate Deliberate bugs introduced as challenges bases on actual errors in class Web deployment aspect very attractive as choice of language to teach Planning, storyboards, visualising thinking, reflection, self assessment VELS ICT Level 6 students compare their own solutions with others and justify suggestions to improve quality
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Task samples
Details Comments
Learning Activities Refresher activities from Yr 9 -- 5 tasks (LA1) Add sound to a movie (LA1a) Path orientation (LA1b) Drawing in Flash (LA2) Buttons and movies (LA3) Compositing or Nesting (LA4) 3D Effects in Flash (LA5) A runner in Flash (LA5b) First ActionScript (LA6) Mouse control ( AS 2.0 and 3.0) (LA7) Keyboard control, screen wrapping (LA8) Collision detection (LA9) Jigsaw puzzle ( can be Quiz type ) (LA10) Colouring car parts (LA11) Scrolling space background (LA13) Saving the Earth shooting game (LA14) and more A choice of projects such as a poker machine or billiards game or car racing game or other Keyframes, motion and shape tweening, motion tweening, guidelines, mask layer Separate layer and control of music loop Driving a car over a hill, bouncing ball Various drawing tasks , shading and gradients, merging objects, grouping , ungrouping Buttons and movies, layer effects, motion guides , scenes Movies in buttons, buttons in movies, movies in movies A range of tasks from PixelEd day illusion of depth, parallax scrolling, blur, dollying Rotoscoping Stop and start buttons in AS3 Mouse drag and drop in 2 different forms of AS Navigating in 4 directions with keyboard control Collision detection, bounding box, registration point, hit spot or area. Use of collision detection , drag and drop ,to check if the right piece is in the right place Drag and drop colour onto car area and it becomes the new colour. Scrolling background as preparation for a space based shooting game Shooting and scrolling background, spaceship and meteors, multiple gun types Work on poker machine game and investigate for further development
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Programming in Actionscriptwhere to now ?

• To imagine the possibilities, to excite the staff
  and students
• To join the journey of discovery and share the
  rewards of achievement and learning
• I will be working on an improved package of
  ActionScript tasks for 2009 or 2010

• Invitation to join and participate on mailing
  lists
• Specific Junior IT list has colleagues and
  resources for sharing.
• Many ideas in this presentation came from this
  and related lists
• http//www.edulists.com.au