Wow. Microsoft continues to amaze me. Pat Yongpradit along with and the staff at Microsoft, is one of the most innovative teachers in the United States and throughout the world(based on his recognition and award last year in South Africa at the 2010 Global Innovative Educator Forum), have worked hard to put together new kind of curriculum…one that makes the student the center of learning and introduces Computer Science in new ways.
It is based on designing games and simulations for the Xbox 360 in the Computer Science classroom. It uses a language called C# (Microsoft proprietary language is a mix between Java and C++) in unison with the XNA studio to allow students to explore programming in a completely new way. All the software, curriculum, and everything that comes with it….is FREE.
If you are wanting to try something new in your Computer Science classroom, give this a try. I assure you: they will love it; they will learn tremendous amounts; you will learn tremendous amounts; they will produce amazing games.
Here is the official post from Microsoft. Enjoy!
The news you have been waiting for…
Your students will love the new Game Development with XNA: Semester 1 curriculum. It is an exciting and engaging computer science course that enables students to apply a basic foundation in programming to game development and simulation using C# and the XNA framework. Students will learn how variables, conditionals, and loops get applied to game creation. They will also learn and apply Object-Oriented design, inheritance and polymorphism, recursion, sorting, searching, and data structures. This course is recommended for students with previous structured programming experience.
The semester curriculum package contains a curriculum framework, lesson plans, demonstration projects, 14 video tutorials, 20 lab assignments, student activities, and assessment tools with keys and exemplars – absolutely everything you need! Student-directed learning resources support independent learning, freeing teachers to focusing on instruction of computer science concepts and student assessment. All materials are teacher-created, classroom-tested, and aligned to nationally recognized computer science standards.
The curriculum and software are free.
Download all 4 components (Roadmap, Part 1 & 2, and Appendix)
Save and unzip on the desktop before moving to directory folders.