I did a talk this morning on code club at Ridgeway Primary school in Croydon where I’ll be starting up a new code club next term. The talk was a 15 minute intro to the principles of the after school club, with a demo of scratch and an opportunity for the children to ask questions. The talk went well I think and the children seemed keen. Here’s a selection of some of the questions that I was asked:
Will the games work on my ipod?
(good question and I actually had to check! Obviously the flash version of the browser one won’t due to the well documented no flash policy in iOS, but I had to check whether the java one would either. Initial experiments with a number of devices would appear to show that out of the box the answer is no, but maybe with a non-default browser you could get this to work. The same appear to go for Android devices as well)
Will I be able to write games as good as Modern Warfare?
(good question again – although as a 9 year old – should you actually be playing Modern Warfare? that’s another story obviously – my actual answer – not quite as complex as Modern Warfare no, but if you start to learn to program here then you can move up to other languages in future which allow you to do just about anything)
How long will the club last for?
simple one this – 6 weeks for one hour a week on Thursdays initially – we’ll do another run after that if anyone wants, in the Autumn term
Will I be able to do 3D graphics?
Interesting question – not directly no, but you’ll be able to do some pretty advanced graphics if you put the time and effort into it – again one for the future if you learn how to program generally I think.
So there we go. Now it’s time for me to do some prep before next month and see if I can get scratch to do games as good as an x-box , in 3D and work across all platforms. Or maybe I’ll just stick to whack a witch for the moment!
