Teaching Game Programming in Family Workshops

Manuscript of: C. Gresse von Wangenheim, A. von Wangenheim. Teaching Game Programming in Family Workshops. IEEE Computer Magazine, 47(8), August 2014.

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Teaching Game Programming in Family Workshops Christiane Gresse von Wangenheim and Aldo von Wangenheim Federal University of Santa Catarina An initiative in Brazil teaches computing to young people alongside their parents in family workshops through game programming using Scratch—with benefits that reach beyond the classroom and into the community. Teaching young people basic computing concepts is a growing priority in education—whether in the classroom, as part of outside workshops and camps, or via online tutorials. We believe involving parents and other older family members in this process can have a significant positive impact. Parents who experience computing lessons first-hand alongside their children are likely to do more at home to support engagement, offer assistance and investment in books and computing equipment, and encourage positive attitudes and behavior that promote future learning. This is particularly important for populations in which parents themselves have little computing knowledge.

Federal University of Santa Catarina Family Workshops As part of the Computing at School initiative at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil (www.computacaonaescola.ufsc.br), we run family workshops in which parents work alongside their children to learn basic programming capabilities by tapping into children’s passion for computer games. In these workshops, we use Scratch (http://scratch.mit.edu), a free programming language and online community developed at the MIT Media Lab especially for young people to create interactive stories, games, and animation with drag-and-drop blocks that perform different commands or actions. So far, we’ve conducted three workshops since 2013. Two took place on the university’s campus in Florianópolis and were open to anyone interested, with parallel sessions in each case because of limited computer lab space. A third was organized as part of a pilot program at a public school in Lages in upstate Santa Catarina. In all, more than 100 children and adults have participated. The initiative’s administrative staff handled logistics such as registration, organizing a snack break, and preparing certificates, with help from a university foundation. Onsite participants paid a small fee to cover instructional materials and snacks; with government funding, the workshop at the school was free to participants.

How the Workshops Run Our workshops last three hours and are aimed at students ages 6 to 14 accompanied by a parent or other adult family member, such as an aunt or uncle. They’re led by professors or graduate students from the university’s Department of Informatics and Statistics, with undergraduates as assistants. Figure 1 illustrates some workshops in action. Participants learn how to program a Scratch game in which players using a mouse move a shark character around the screen to capture as many fish as possible (Figure 2).This programming involves simple commands that govern on-screen visuals and motion using basic conditionals, loops, and operators for generating random numbers; workshop leaders also demonstrate how to create and use a variable as a game counter.

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Figure 1. Scenes from family workshops teaching programming to children and parents.

Underlying these lessons are fundamental computing concepts such as algorithmic problem solving (problem statement, implementation, and testing) and the idea that a program consists of step-by-step instructions, as well as experience in collaborative pair programming.

Figure 2. Screen shot from a Scratch computer game used in the family workshops. Adapted from “Bit and Byte Go Fishing with Scratch,” Ask, Sept. 2013, pp. 14–19; http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/12936663 .

We designed the workshops to focus specifically on active learning. In the first half, the instructor explains how to create the game step by step, supported by a Manga-style booklet we’ve created. The child/parent pairs perform each programming step immediately following its explanation, testing the implementation and correcting any errors with help from the assistants if necessary. 2


In the second half, we present further possibilities, such as adding sound, introducing webcam elements, and modifying keyboard-controlled movements. Participants are encouraged to freely explore the programming environment, either modifying the game they’ve created—by adding other sea creatures, for example—or programming a completely different one using another setting—perhaps a dragon and princess walking in a castle. In addition to individual help from the presenter and assistants, participants also receive a set of instructional cards explaining the various commands; the fronts of these show what can be done and the backs how it can be

accomplished. Figure 3 illustrates some sample instructional materials. Figure 3. Manga-style instructional booklet and card set developed for use in the workshops. Adapted from http://info.scratch.mit.edu/Support/Scratch_Cards .

Lessons Learned So far, the workshops have proved a great success. Publicized via social networks and the local press, those onsite generated increased interest each time, and we’re now maintaining waiting lists for the future. The children participating in the public school program were motivated to involve their parents by their own experiences in computing classes. And while the onsite participants were mostly from middle-class homes and the public school program participants from less privileged families, the motivation and learning observed in both workshops were essentially the same. Workshop participants have followed instructions easily and enjoyed actively taking part in programming processes. Young children have found testing the steps especially satisfying—for example, being able to make the shark follow the mouse’s movement—and both parents and children have often started proposing modifications to the basic game even before our initial step-by-step instruction was complete. During the second workshop phase, they haven’t hesitated to explore other themes, from ballet dancers to space rockets, often using different motion commands based on keyboard interaction. Scratch, in particular, has provided an extremely intuitive environment to teach game programming, offering galleries of attractive scenes and actors as well as multiple possibilities for personalizing them with its paint tools. The range of games from the workshops shown in Figure 4 suggests participants’ quick adeptness with the tool. Participant responses have been enthusiastic as well, with young people offering praise such as “Cool and fun,” “I loved the workshop,” and “I want to show it to my friends,” and parents’ written comments including “The workshop was well structured and explored important programming functions in a creative and attractive way,” “Excellent for the initiation of children,” “Highly interactive, encouraging autonomy and creativity of the participants,” and “I didn’t imagine my daughter would like it so much.”

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Figure 4. Screenshots showing a range of games created during the family workshops.

Moreover, in follow-up surveys where we asked participants to evaluate the workshops on a scale from 1 (poor) to 4 (excellent), average ratings were 3.8 for content, 3.7 for organization/sequence, 3.8 for instructional materials, 3.5 with respect to duration, and an overall rating of 3.8. The only common suggestion for improvement was that the workshop be longer, indicating participants’ satisfaction and eagerness to learn more. Parents’ comments also revealed increased recognition of computing education’s importance not only in their child’s life but also their own. Several participants, both adults and children, expressed their intent to continue working on their games at home and also to share what they’d learned with siblings who didn’t attend. Reaching both children and adults, these family workshops thus provide computing education broadly within the community. And while the workshops served to provide valuable parent-child activity time, they had a further interpersonal benefit. Because the children participating often learned concepts more quickly than their parents, executing tasks in this pair programming format gave them a chance to be the “teacher” to their parents and achieve a special sense of empowerment. Based on this success, we plan to continue our workshops as self-contained events and also include some version in school programs currently being developed in conjunction with the Computing at School initiative. We’re also planning a new workshop for physical computing aimed at 12- to 14-year-olds and their families that incorporates Scratch, the Arduino hardware platform, and commercial construction-block sets like ATTO (http://jfwdual.wix.com/atto) along with alternative recycled materials. Christiane Gresse von Wangenheim is a professor in the Department of Informatics and Statistics at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil, and coordinates the Computing at School initiative there. She received a PhD in computer science from the University of Kaiserslautern, Germany, and is a member of the IEEE Computer Society. Contact her at [email protected]. Aldo von Wangenheim is an associate professor in the Department of Informatics and Statistics at the Federal University of Santa Catarina and coordinator of the Brazilian Institute for Digital Convergence. He received a PhD in computer science from the University of Kaiserslautern, Germany. Contact him at [email protected].

Editor: Kelvin Sung, Computing [email protected]

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