Microsoft Coding Workshop
A couple weeks ago, Katie, Angus and I had formed a team to be the trainers for the Microsoft Coding Workshop at the Inno Carnival 2014 held in Science Park. It wasn’t like we'd suddenly become some sort if hotshot programmers who got insane skills and could write complex code that could reduce CPU usage to a minimum etc. We were just tutors for kids and secondary school students. Therefore, instead of teaching C++ or Java, we introduced them to some simple IDEs and softwares.
For our first 2 classes, which were on the same day, we decided me to be the first speaker and they were just gonna be helpers. I already had some experience on tutoring kids, so I was okay with that. My first class was a bunch of primary school kids, easy! After my math-class teaching experience, there was really nothing I couldn’t handle. And this time, there was even a class teacher chaperoning on them. So as a start, I gave them a brief introduction of a IDE-ish software called Kodu, which is technically a video game (the game created was playable on Xbox360 too.) Then I shown them a racing game I made to blow their minds in order to keep their attention on me. It worked like a charm. They literally did whatever I told them to. In an hour, I smoothly (I think) guided them from creating characters and drawing the racing tracks to adding some simple commands to make the AI work. And they all were able to finish a playable game. So we got through our first class. Good job team!
The second class was a little bit tricky. Literally, I just taught the same stuff, but my audience was not a bunch of kids, but a class of secondary school students. When I was at their age, I'd already bee playing games like Winning Eleven, Resident Evil and Half Life 2. And instead of learning Kodu, I was learning Pascal. So I was worried Kodu would be a little way too simple for them. It turned out I was wrong. When I did my introduction to Kodu again, the effect was not as dramatic, without doubt. So again, I shown them the game I designed. Fortunately, it was still enough to get some "Ooh..."s and "Wow..."s. Some of them acted like they were too cool to care about learning a game-making game designed for kids. Typical. Secondary school students always did this kind of stuff. But I saw right through it and I knew I already got them hooked. Since they were more capable, I was able to teach more and some "advanced" techniques on designing the game too. Therefore, I made it through again, I was on fire!
Since the hardest part (for me) was over, for the rest of the classes, I just sat back and let Katie and Angus do all the heavy-lifting. Lucky for Katie, she only needed to teach one class on the next day. But compared to mine, what taught was a little more code-based. Unlike Kodu, TouchDevelop was an online platform which let people develop apps. Inside you just needed to drag many a segment of code together to form a program. Designing a Flappy Bird game only required 5 minutes, tops!
I was still a bit unsure if what Angus's taught was programming. So during his class, kid just dragged tiles containing instructions on telling how an Angry Bird should move in order to reach desired destination on a map. All in all, it was more like a puzzle game to me. But the game really brought out the concept of looping and if-condition statements, and when you finished all the 20 levels, you would get a certificate from "Hour of Code" (which you had to print it out yourself.) So who was I to judge? Besides, Angus really knew how to arouse the kids' interest and kept them engaged. I hated to say it, but Angus might have pulled off the most enjoyable classes among us.
After we'd finished our classes and were into leaving, some girl next to some random booth got out attention and asked if we would like a panorama, for free. Well how could we say no to free stuff? And it could be a pretty cool keepsake too!
Finally, here are some nice photos.
Nice working with y'all, Angus and Katie!
Kev
P.S. I'm starting to write my next post right away, which would be about the last English Table this year, stay tuned!
For our first 2 classes, which were on the same day, we decided me to be the first speaker and they were just gonna be helpers. I already had some experience on tutoring kids, so I was okay with that. My first class was a bunch of primary school kids, easy! After my math-class teaching experience, there was really nothing I couldn’t handle. And this time, there was even a class teacher chaperoning on them. So as a start, I gave them a brief introduction of a IDE-ish software called Kodu, which is technically a video game (the game created was playable on Xbox360 too.) Then I shown them a racing game I made to blow their minds in order to keep their attention on me. It worked like a charm. They literally did whatever I told them to. In an hour, I smoothly (I think) guided them from creating characters and drawing the racing tracks to adding some simple commands to make the AI work. And they all were able to finish a playable game. So we got through our first class. Good job team!
Since the hardest part (for me) was over, for the rest of the classes, I just sat back and let Katie and Angus do all the heavy-lifting. Lucky for Katie, she only needed to teach one class on the next day. But compared to mine, what taught was a little more code-based. Unlike Kodu, TouchDevelop was an online platform which let people develop apps. Inside you just needed to drag many a segment of code together to form a program. Designing a Flappy Bird game only required 5 minutes, tops!
I was still a bit unsure if what Angus's taught was programming. So during his class, kid just dragged tiles containing instructions on telling how an Angry Bird should move in order to reach desired destination on a map. All in all, it was more like a puzzle game to me. But the game really brought out the concept of looping and if-condition statements, and when you finished all the 20 levels, you would get a certificate from "Hour of Code" (which you had to print it out yourself.) So who was I to judge? Besides, Angus really knew how to arouse the kids' interest and kept them engaged. I hated to say it, but Angus might have pulled off the most enjoyable classes among us.
After we'd finished our classes and were into leaving, some girl next to some random booth got out attention and asked if we would like a panorama, for free. Well how could we say no to free stuff? And it could be a pretty cool keepsake too!
Finally, here are some nice photos.
Nice working with y'all, Angus and Katie!
Kev
P.S. I'm starting to write my next post right away, which would be about the last English Table this year, stay tuned!
Microsoft Coding Workshop
Reviewed by Kevin Lai
on
9:32:00 AM
Rating:
Reviewed by Kevin Lai
on
9:32:00 AM
Rating:
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