Help on a learning course

[Jonas DK]

Hi all,

Anyone have any Ideas on a project that I can do with my students?
Class starts mid September and we are doing 10 sessions of 2 houres on AMS, going from knowing nothing to getting enthusiastic about learning more.

I find that my students learn best with an ongoing project that builds, so when the 10 weeks are over they have a finish fun Little app they can take home.

It is classroom sessions and I am also creating 10 videos they can Watch at home to sum up og go in more depth with more dificult concepts.

I hope some of the good AMS Users have tons of Ideas of progressive learning Projects.

after 10 weeks with AMS we do 10 weeks of C# and Visual Studio and a lot more videos (already have plans for a few hours a week) and the entire class ends NeXT spring with a 2 weekend marathon Building and publishing there own Windows 8 App.

I've found that AMS is an extremly effective Tool to get the basics of understanding about programming and get them hooked on learning more. as they can very quickly build something visual that Works. Last year I used the Webbrowser template as an introduction and with in 2 hours they had build it from scratch.

Can you all have a nice evening..

regards,
Jonas

[jfxwave]

I would say have them build some sort of audio program. Something that plays .mp3 or even videos .avi or .mpg. Kids love music and for them to build their own audio program will keep them interested in the project and have fun at the same time. I myself is building a touch screen type media app for a 7" screen for my truck. I was using Centrafuse but it's tries to do to much and crashes all the time. I stared one and was using Centrafuse images but now I'm thinking of doing my own because I find the images have things (buttons) I don't care for and having to photo-shop them out and thought if I'm having to do all this art work why not design my own.

Well good luck
Jean

[Nickj]

Hi Jonas, is there any particular guidance in the Danish curriculum on what they should be doing?
You have 10 sessions of 2 hours each so a total of 20 hours.
Interest would be generated by making something that serves a purpose, one thing that is common would be using a database to store something. Either a flat file XML or an SQL type database, the SQL query building would carry over to the other sessions with C# and visual studio.
Something relatively simple like an app to log CDs or DVD's. You have a database to record the data (SQLite or XML), an interface to log and review, you could add in a web component to find either artist or other information. If you make something like a simple design brief (and maybe a few core items like the databade or XML template) you end up with a skeleton that could be reused with little effort to work with other things like recpies, films or games
It depends on the age range you are dealing with more than anything and what interests them.

[Jonas DK]

lighting the flame of Inspiration

Hi,

Well the age Group is 12-15. There is not a set curriculum as it is a volunteer after school program.
They have all decided to take the class among a lot of possible classes that we offer (I think last year there was about 50 different classes, from sowing your on clothes, wood class, Drama class and to Things like Hunting License class and fix your own Car class).

I started last year, sort of by accident :-), but I was amazed at the skillset they have at that age (when I think about my own interests at that age...), but also a bit worried about their ambition level.
Multiple times, I had to emphasize that it would not be possible in the short amount of time to teach them enough to make the Next great thing, but I could only hope to teach them enough to get them inspired to go out and learn more on their own.
As I did not have time to prepare last year I actually used an old project I had laying around from another Forum user TJ Tigger, that He made a long time ago, a program that stores Usernames and Passwords in an SQLite database and uses Encryption.

This actually worked great as I could cut it up into small pieces using Variables, writing a little code, take the code and put it into reusable functions, add the SQLite database functionality and then add the encryption. This made it somewhat progressive and we did have some fun with it.
Even so, it did get a bit too complicated for them to follow the logic, as we did not have so much time as I was poorly prepared.

Making an application that uses XML to store data in actually sounds like a good idea, as I am working on a sample Windows Store App that gets its content from parsing an XML file (but that is for a different class).
But the C# sessions I have lined up uses SQL (A simple Address book)

However, it is all about lighting the flame of Inspiration inside them, to get them to go out and learn more.

This year I am also working on creating some video series that will follow the in class teachings but also add extra to what we can do in the classroom for those that do get interested in doing more.