If you are uncomfortable with
pretending to be dumber than you
are, I have also found that it works
quite well to make it a game by giving
groups a clue and challenging them to
reach their own solutions.
Grab Them with Gaming
And that brings us to one of the most
effective tools for getting girls to go
for coding—games.
In every computer room I have ever
been in, all of my students, if left to
their own devices, will start playing
games. They may differ in their preferences. While boys will tend to turn to
first-person shooter games, such as
CounterStrike, or strategy games, such
as Defense of the Ancients, girls usually
like to play online dress-up games, such
as those found at dressupgames.com;
simulation games, such as Sims; or card
games, such as solitaire. Mario Brothers
has made a big comeback among all my
students as well.
Although girls often see programming as nerdy, they don’t seem to feel
the same way about gaming. So I decided to try to get some of the positive
regard they hold for games to rub off
on computing in general.
In 2012, I set my grade 10 students
the challenge of designing their own
Adobe Flash games and competing in
a Games Day where their peers would
play the games and an IT industry
professional would judge them.
We had introduced them to other
programming languages, including
JavaScript and Scratch, when we par-
ticipated in the Hour of Code that we
were able to offer thanks to the De-
coded Team ( decoded.co/uk) from the
United Kingdom. However, I chose
Flash for the Games Day project, not
because I was an expert in Action-
script (the coding language behind
Flash), but because we had Flash on
our machines and Flash games were
already popular among the girls. Al-
though Flash’s relevance had begun
to be questioned because support
was not available on mobile devices, I
figured that a similar platform would
likely replace it, so that any skills the
girls learned would be transferrable.
Plus, I had already taught the girls
how to create Flash animations—a
project they seemed to enjoy—so they
were familiar with the program and
had a positive attitude toward it. It
was all part of my plan to slip in some
nerdy programming without hearing
too many complaints!
I had never made my own Flash game
or used ActionScript before, so I took a
few online tutorials and learned a couple
of skills, which convinced me that it was
doable. I knew I could teach my students
enough to get them started and would
understand enough to be able to scaffold
their learning, should they explore new
skills beyond my competency.
Creating the Games
I divided the girls up into mentorship
groups so they could collaborate on
their games. I decided to start with
an hour-long lesson to walk them
through using button behaviours
to create a simple click-and-learn
“game.” I thought the less adventurous
students could easily base an edutain-ment-type game on these core skills,
which allow words or sounds, such as
foreign language vocabulary, to appear
when a player clicks on a button.
In the second lesson, I taught them
how to use ActionScript to create
drag-and-drop games, such as a paper-doll-type dress-up game where players
drag items of clothing onto a figure.
Although this skill was a little more
challenging, the girls had to use only a
few lines of code, then tweak it for each
object. By modifying and building on
the content of either of these two basic
types of games, they could easily create
their own original applications.
I also loaded links to a range of online
tutorials from www.flashclassroom.com
so that the more adventurous groups
could teach themselves how to create
other types of games. That site was
undergoing revision due to a change
from ActionScript 2 to ActionScript
3, which became something of an issue
in 2013, but the tutorials worked very
well in 2012. They were simple enough
that I could walk a class through one in
an hour and leave enough time for stu-
dents to complete a passable example
in class.
In the third lesson, I tasked the
groups with designing their own
games. They would have three hours
of in-class contact time before Games
Day to complete their projects.
Most groups both in 2012 and 2013
based their games heavily on either
the button-behaviour skills or the
drag-and-drop skills I taught them,
but some used tutorials to learn how
to create different types of programs,
with varying degrees of success. It was
enormously gratifying to see my non-programmers searching online forums
and tutorials and following instructions for complex coding in a language
I had never taught them.
My role during their game-creation
classes and after school was largely
to help the girls overcome difficulties
with interpreting the online tutorials, to debug problems, and to comment on progress. In 2013, the groups
tended to be more ambitious, so I was
called on to help resolve issues well
beyond my competency. Luckily, I was
able to help in almost all instances because I was a little more experienced
in coding and knew of more solutions
that might be available. Although two
groups did give up and fall back on
game designs that used simpler skill
sets, in most cases the students resolved their problems and produced
a working or semi-working game.
And the Winners Are...
In 2012, I managed to get Nicholas
Smuts, who runs an e-learning company, to judge the games. The winning group used drag-and-drop code
to create a jigsaw puzzle game, and
the second-place game used button
Everyone should have some coding background to round out their digital skills and develop critical thinking.
