Yesterday I met with the local High School to discuss the
possibilities of getting involved by running programs for
interested students in the areas of web and games
development. During the course of the meeting, I was asked to
come up with a few paragraphs that the staff could use when
promoting these programs, so I thought I'd put it up here (partly
to help consolidate my thoughts into a hopefully cohesive
introduction rather than just rambling on...). So here
goes. Any constructive comments or suggestions are entirely
welcome, so please don't be shy - jump right in to the
conversation!
First a little background. The school, Lara Secondary
College in Victoria, Australia is really what you would call a
regional school - Lara is situated outside of the nearest large
city (Geelong) and is considered to be "The country between the
cities" to quote one local resident. While Lara is by no
means a small country town and is rapidly growing, it still retains
that small town community atmosphere. The school itself has a
Connections program for Year 9 Students running for a good part of
the year one day a week, in which students are encouraged to take
on projects that directly benefit the community in some way.
My original vision for setting up a what might look like a club
within the school was to teach students some of the more cutting
edge web technologies focussing on two areas:
- Web page layout and design utilising HTML5 and CSS3, and
- Online Games development utilising open source javascript
frameworks and tools.
We would do this by coming up with a project that would benefit
the community in some way - perhaps by re-desiging one of the local
not-for-profit community organisations, or by designing a game with
an educational focus to be used by the wider school community (and
even by other schools)
So this is what I have come up with to introduce students to the
idea and to generate some interest:
. o o o 0 0 O 0 0 o
o o .
Online Computing these days is pervasive in all areas of our
daily lives - whether it be reading emails or chatting on Facebook,
or perhaps playing your favourite game of Pac Man, the humble Web
Browser is fast becoming less of an application in its own right
and taking a seat in the background while it acts as simply a host
to highly interactive and expressive web-based applications.
These days you can play games and watch movies; connect with people
from across the globe; or just write that business document - all
from within one of the popular Web Browsers without having to
install a thing.
Today we have tools freely available within our grasp to not
only create visually compelling web sites, but also make those
websites dynamically interactive with video, sound, and
animation. There are tools and frameworks upon which games
are being built, and high quality graphics can be rendered right
within the browser window. In fact, you can author a complete
website from scratch without having to open anything more
than your favourite browser.
JavaScript - the programming language of the web browser - can
be used to program a website to pull information and present it
from sources all over the web - want your Facebook status displayed
on your website? no problem. Perhaps you have uploaded a new
YouTube video and want to embed it on your site. Easy. Or
maybe you want to be able to plot geographical data and connect the
dots with Google Maps. JavaScript can be used to do all this
and more.
We are looking for a group of students with an interest in
computing, and who have a passion to do more than just use the web
- they want to build it. Students will gain an understanding
of the building blocks of a website, and we then go beyond that to
examine what it takes to create a game from scratch that can be
used to deliver value to the wider community. We will also
have professionals who are experts in their field come in and hold
workshops in the areas of Graphic Design and Web Development.
. o o o 0 0 O 0 0 o
o o .
That's it. If anyone has anything to add, or any other
comments, suggestions or thoughts, please, drop me a line...