Etoys Challenge - Game Controls

The following post contains teaching tips and ideas for Etoys Game Controls  (click on link to get project) which is an Etoys project designed to help kids learn to create their own games. Etoys can be downloaded here.

Etoys is tool that can be used by teachers to:

• Create Curriculum
• Assess children's understanding
• Provide skill practice
• Motivate students
• Help children learn useful and powerful ideas

Etoys is a tool that can be used by students to:

• Write Reports
• Communicate Ideas
• Create their own Stories
• Learn from each other
• Create Games
• Develop a deeper understanding

Teaching Tips for this Project:

• Try not to give the kids the answer, they will figure it out for themselves eventually. Instead you can ask them questions or have another student help them.
• Train students to help others by asking them questions and not giving them the answer directly. For example: Esteban, can you help Leonardo, now please don't give him the answer, instead give him hints and try asking him questions that will help him figure it out for himself.
• Ask the kids if they have seen a similar problem before.
• Ask the kids if they have seen another project that solved the problem or did what they are trying to do. Then ask them to study that project to figure out how they did it. You can even point them to a project that can help them. For Example, on Step 4, you can ask them if they have seen anything that sends the car back to the start.
• Towards the end of class if there is time, look at the different ways kids have written scripts and pick out two that used different methods to solve the same problem. Then ask the class do both work? Which is better? Why is it better? Is there another way?
• Encourage kids to look at their scripts and "play computer" ONE STEP AT A TIME to figure out what it is doing.
• Questions to ask while Teaching with this project: "How can we make the game harder?" and "How can we make the game easier?" Invert, always invert' ('man muss immer umkehren') - Carl Jacobi)

Things to look for while Teaching with this project:

• Look For: Kids who change the forward value from 5 to a higher number.
• When you see it: Ask the child why they did that, then praise them for such a good idea, tell the rest of the class "Pablo, came up with a neat change to his script" then ask Pablo to show the other kids what he did. Then you could ask the other's why did Pablo's idea work?

• Listen For: Kids who come up with ideas for improving the game or new games
• When you hear it: Tell the child, out loud so others can hear it, something like: "Sadie, that is a great idea to improve the game." Then ask her to share her idea and ask the other kids to come up with ideas to improve the game or make their own games. Ideally you should only have to do this once or twice to "prime the pump" and get kids talking and sharing ideas on how they can improve the game or make their own games.

• Listen For: Kids who ask "Is negative 5 turn to the left" or any question about how a tile works.
• When you hear it: Tell them: "Good question, how can you find out? Is there a Test you can run to figure it out?" Then when they run the test and discover the answer for themselves, praise them and tell the rest of the class "Hey folks, look at what Ines did!  She wasn't sure what this tile did then she created a test and found out the answer for her self. (While saying this ideally you can show or have Ines show the question she had and the test she ran).  The goal is to encourage kids to test things and find the answer themselves.

• Listen For: "Hey I can make a two player game" I have heard this when the realize on Step 4 that the arrow keys ( and were changed to a,s,d,w.
• When you hear it: Say "That's a great idea, i'd love to see that'
• NOTE: There will be problems when a child creates a two player game with the techniques shown in this project. That's okay, its good for kids to get frustrated once and a while. I will post another project and blog post on how to deal with that later.

• Look For: A child who is stuck and their script isn't working the way they expect.
• When you see it: Ask them to look at their script and explain what it does. You may want to ask what a specific tile does (the one that is causing the problem. The goal is to encourage them to look at their scripts and "play computer" and figure out what the computer will do. Remind them the computer only does what you tell it to do AND it does EXACTLY what you tell it, not what you want it to do.

• Look For: NOTE: In this project on the first two steps the scripts start in "Ticking" state so as soon as they put in a tile that action is taken.  This will hopefully surprise some kids and lead them to ask "Why did that happen" If they do ask or notice ...
  
• When you see it: ... Ask them to look at the scripts "Ticking" state. Hopefully they will realize that is the reason (with guided questions if neccesary). Then ask them what the different states do and when they give you an answer (right or wrong it doesn't matter at this point, really!), ask them to "Prove It!"  Ie: "How can you design a test to prove that's what it does?The goal being to get the kids in the habit of designing tests and testing their ideas.
  

• Look For: Kids who finish a step early. In a large class (and even in a small) one this will happen.
• When you see it: Ask the child if there is another way to solve the problem. Always good to get kids thinking about alternate approaches to solving a problem. I had one student who in step 2 used forward and turn for the same arrow key and it to my surprise it worked!  Ask the child to help another child who may be struggling. Remember to train them to ask questions and give hints, NOT answers.
• Look For: Kids who finish a step early. In a large class (and even in a small) one this will happen.
• When you see it: Ask the child if there is another way to solve the problem. Always good to get kids thinking about alternate approaches to solving a problem. I had one student who in step 2 used forward and turn for the same arrow key and it to my surprise it worked!  Ask the child to help another child who may be struggling. Remember to train them to ask questions and give hints, NOT answers.

• Look For: Kids who put a Test tile inside the "NO" section of another Test tile. Most kids I have seen put one test after another.  
• When you see it: At the right time, perhaps towards the end of the class when you ask kids to look at the different ways kids have solved the problems (ie: the different ways of writing the scripts) you could ask them are these the same?

• Listen For: "Oh I get it"
• When you see it: Smile to yourself, this it the Joy of teaching and learning. Then ask the child what they discovered and if appropriate share it with the class.

• Look For: Two kids using different tiles for "reset" on Step 4. Both "Car reset" and "Car do reset" do the same thing.  Frankly I wasn't sure if I should include this or not. 
• When you see it: Let me know what you think about the reaction and dialogue of the kids. Thanks!

Things to Add/Next Steps:

• Time Trials (A challenge to show kids how to create their own timer) This should lead the kids to try and make harder mazes and change the values for move forward and turn from 5 to higher numbers. Of course some may make easier mazes.
• Provide a Top Ten Times lists where kids can post their high scores. This will require prompting for names, lists and sorting. Will work on a project to teach this later.
• You have three lives to get through the maze without touching the wall
• Consider adding a "background" script in Step 3, so kids can't go through walls.
• Consider adding a sound in Step 3 when a car hits a wall. 
• Have the child Enter their name at the beginning of the project and customize the certificate with their name. Ideally print it or email it at the end. Need smalltalk/squeak script to do this.

How to relate this to "School Curricullum"

• turn teach about degrees in a circle (need to create a lesson plan on this for teachers to make the connection more obvious for the kids)
• the x and y in reset teach about Geometry
• teaches programming
• Etoys can be used to create curricullum
• Etoys can be used for students to create reports and explore ideas

Prerequisites:
Students should have completer the Etoys Projects: Demon Castle and Etoys Challenge which can be found in the "Tutorials and Demos" from the Etoys Home Project.

Acknowledgements:
The design of this project is based upon Etoys Challenge by  Toshio Miyasaka. The beauty of his design (and Etoys which allows you to do this) is that you can design the learning environment so that the child has only those things necessary to solve the problem visible and is not distracted by all the powerful scripting tiles available within Etoys.