Carla Hester-Croff

School
Assistant Professor of Information Technology (Teach Computer Science and Web Development courses) Western Wyoming Community College 2500 College Drive Rock Springs, WY 82901

You can take a tour at www.wwcc.wy.edu/tour.htm

How will I introduce Scalable Game Design in my school?
Scalable Game Design (SGD)Project

2011 There is one University (University of Wyoming) and 7 community colleges in Wyoming. I'm located at Western Wyoming Community College located in Southwest Wyoming in Rock Springs, WY. Part of our role in our five-county service area is to support middle and high schools with the implementation of Scalable Game Design. The Computer Science Interns provide assistance to the schools.

2013 Update: Attending the SGD Summer Institute to make sure I'm up to date on AgentSheets. AgentCubes 3D is just being implemented and wanting to a handle on it for this coming academic year.

Frogger: rs-web.wwcc.wy.edu/webdev/frogger/

Project Journal
Week 1, Tuesday, May 31, 2011: Created Frogger game - learned different ways of teaching from other instructors. Some helpful shortcuts i.e. pulling up behaviors side-by-side and copying conditions/actions, double clicking an agent to access behaviors.

Week 1, Wednesday, June 1, 2011: Created Sokoban game - learned about using the count feature. I would have to say this is one of my favorite games thus far. When reloading your game it may not update due to the cache, you can test by pulling your game from the arcade on a different computer.

Week 1, Thursday, June 2, 2011: Created Ms. Pacman (since I'm a woman - hear me roar!) game - learned some new techniques i.e. creating Full Connectivity for the walls within the game and animating the death of the Ms. Pacman. Very interesting! You can name the ghosts i.e. blue_ghost or have the students look up what the actual names of the ghosts are and name them their original names.

Week 1, Friday, June 3, 2011: Today we had a debugging session and talked about Computational Thinking Patterns (scalablegamedesign.cs.colorado.edu/wiki/Category:Computational_Thinking_Patterns). Tips: use www.picresize.com to assistant in resizing images to 32 x 32 or use Google, Images to find 32 x 32 size images.

Examples of Computational Thinking Patters below:

Transport: The transport pattern occurs when one agent is carrying another agent below:



Script: The script pattern occurs when all agents perform the same sequence of actions below:



Generate: The generate pattern occurs when one agent needs to generate a stream of other agents that move away, for example subway coming out of a tunnel:



Week 2, Monday, June 6, 2011: Today we have been discussing simulations. We created a Forest Fire Simulation which I found to be very interesting.

Week 2, Tuesday, June 7, 2011: Today we discussed conversational programming and we worked on advanced computer science techniques. Again interesting. For Windows, to edit Java compiled code i.e. .class file you will need a Java decompiler such as cavaj-java-decompiler.en.softonic.com/

Week 2, Wednesday, June 8, 2011: Worked in groups. I took part in the Computer Science group and learned about randomization to show my CS students.

Week 2, Thursday, June 9 2011: We worked on our own games and presented them to the Denver news. We also discussed different teaching methods.

Week 2, Friday, June 10, 2011: Reviewed 3D version and web gaming using AgentSheets. We're wrapping things up.

Contact Information
Western Wyoming Community College 2500 College Drive Rock Springs, Wyoming 82901 (307) 382-1745


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