Game Presentations Preperation

It is the middle of the year, so you know what that means, Game Demo presentations.  Many of the teams are almost completely ready for presentations.  Hopefully the rest will be ready by Thursday.  Although we are in a run of four snow days in the past week and a half and that may set us back a little.  I really enjoy game demo presentations for several reasons.  The students realize that there are several other people monitoring their work, and that gives them more motivation.  Also the Globaloria staff always offers great suggestions for all of the teams.  The most important part, in my opinion, is that it always raises student engagement and excitement levels.  I am hoping that all of my students will be in attendance for demos and will receive some great information about their games. I will post all of the game demos to viddler to allows all of my students to add them to their team page.

Adding Animation and Sound

After a few struggles and a loss of excitement, adding animation and adding sound has helped regain students engagement. As stated earlier, many students became frustrated with flash programming. After the unit on adding animation, they now enjoy working with flash. To this point Adding Animation has been the most enjoyed unit the students have worked through. I had to force them to continue on with the course schedule. They all wanted to continue to make animations and show what they had done. Adding sound has also been a fun topic for the students. I am glad that these two units are placed where they are in the curriculum. Both years I have taught Globaloria, students became frustrated around the same time. I think we are back on the correct path and hopefully on our way to success.

This year in Globaloria

Once again in the beginning of the year student excitement was at a high level.  All of the students are working hard and seem to be enjoying the class.  They update their blogs and wikis continuously, as this still seems to be their favorite part of the course.  When we started working with flash, I saw many similarities from last years group.  The start of flash usually brings a little frustration to the class and student attitude seems to be at its lowest.  This only lasts for a small time.  I feel that I have done a better job this year utilizing Globaloria helpdesk, which has decreased some of the frustration.  I am confident that this years class will be just as successful as last years.