You just have to love those lightbulb moments. I know they happen to me at the most unexpected moments when my mind is wandering or completely off-task and not focused on any specific problem. But my favorite lightbulb moments are the ones I see in my students. And for my kids, it’s a regular event. Often at this time of year, when my students in Game Art & Design are learning how to make 2D video games, such moments come fast and furious. You see, we don’t have any computer science classes, per se, at our school. What that means for my artistic students is that Game Art & Design is typically the first time they experience working with programming. DSA focuses on the arts and as is often the case, the logical, programming mind and the free-flowing creative mind tend to move in different circles. So, basic programming logic and syntax can be a bit confusing for many of the students. But, it doesn’t take long for them to start realizing that it really isn’t that difficult, as long as you pay attention to what you type and think about the desired outcome from the beginning of a project. The typical ah-ha moment goes something like this:
- Student – My game is broken…help!
- Me – Read the instructions again…be careful to double check every character you keyed in.
- Student – It all looks the same…everything matches!
- Me – Are you sure? Check your capitalization and punctuation.
- Student (sometimes 1-3 days later) – OH…I can’t believe I put a comma there instead of a period!
By this point, I have been explaining to them for a couple of years why syntax, writing skills and attention to detail are such important skills to gain as a game designer. This is the moment when they realize that by being critical of their writing skills, I have been forcing them to pay closer attention to such details and it has helped them to notice the little errors in their games much faster than they would have otherwise. Typically, it only takes one or two such mistakes for them to realize the difference between things names such as objSpaceship and objspaceship and they begin to understand the importance of syntax in programming. It’s then that my students often start making their most interesting games…and the real fun begins!