GAMEPLAY DESIGN: HOW TO YOU GET STARTED?

Hey CNMT and complex ECS students,

I thought we could continue our activities in SCRATCH to involve ourselves in thinking about Game Design in terms of both the interactive and visual. to start I would like you to think of your game designs as similar to animation, this would be the focus of the visual part. Please see The article: "12 Basic principles of animation" for ideas in understanding classic animation.

Next, read the article: "The 13 Principles of Game Play Design" this will help you to understand the relationship between animation and game design.

Finally, review "How to Make Games by Scratch Online" to give you a better understanding of how to plan your own custom designed SCRATCH game!

I am very excited to see all of the great ideas and creativity you will all bring to your Scratch Game Design Projects...

Mr. Casas

Computer programming: What is computer programming? Learn to program with scratch!

Computer programming, also known as coding can be understood as the activity of designing, writing, testing and modifying computer programming language in order to achieve a desired and predictable outcome(s).

Computer programming has changed over time, however the following characteristics remain the most relevant to what is considered important for programming today:

• Efficiency/performance: the amount of system resources a program consumes (processor time, memory space, slow devices such as disks, network bandwidth and to some extent even user interaction): the less, the better. This also includes correct disposal of some resources, such as cleaning up temporary files and lack of memory leaks.
• Reliability: how often the results of a program are correct. This depends on conceptual correctness of algorithms, and minimization of programming mistakes, such as mistakes in resource management (e.g., buffer overflows and race conditions) and logic errors (such as division by zero or off-by-one errors).
• Robustness: how well a program anticipates problems not due to programmer error. This includes situations such as incorrect, inappropriate or corrupt data, unavailability of needed resources such as memory, operating system services and network connections, and user error.
• Usability: the ergonomics of a program: the ease with which a person can use the program for its intended purpose, or in some cases even unanticipated purposes. Such issues can make or break its success even regardless of other issues. This involves a wide range of textual, graphical and sometimes hardware elements that improve the clarity, intuitiveness, cohesiveness and completeness of a program's user interface.
• Portability: the range of computer hardware and operating system platforms on which the source code of a program can be compiled/interpreted and run. This depends on differences in the programming facilities provided by the different platforms, including hardware and operating system resources, expected behaviour of the hardware and operating system, and availability of platform specific compilers (and sometimes libraries) for the language of the source code

• Maintainability: the ease with which a program can be modified by its present or future developers in order to make improvements or customizations, fix bugs and security holes, or adapt it to new environments. Good practices during initial development make the difference in this regard. This quality may not be directly apparent to the end user but it can significantly affect the fate of a program over the long term.

Read full article on wikipedia: Click here

Get Started learning how to program with scratch: Click here

Adding INTERACTIVITY to your website!

Follow these links for ideas on how to add INTERACTIVE features to your website:

http://www.123mycodes.com/

http://www.123-banner.com/

http://www.slideroll.com/index.php

http://www.phonevite.com/

http://www.makeagif.com/

Have fun and add at least 3 interactive features to your student home page.

Adding INTERACTIVITY to your website

HTML TAGS for WEB DESIGNERS

Web Design Unit

Hey ECS students,

Sorry guys-the HTML we will be learning is
HYPERTEXT MARKUP LANGUAGE!

I've put together some great links for you to begin exploring how HTML codes/tags are the basic building blocks of all websites.

Please have a look at the following links and start thinking about how you would like your own student home page website to look and how you would like it to work.

A good way to begin planning your own website is to sketch-out the design on paper and then go through some of the problem solving techniques we have discussed earlier in identifying how to build features into your design using the HTML coding commands.

1. W3schools.com
2. web source
3. html code tutorial
4. web monkey html codes
5. html codes

Also, see this site to get an idea how much it might cost to have a website built:

Design Quote: Website design calculator

Last but not least see this link for Adobe Golive Basics


Mr. Casas

HAPPY 2011 CNMT STUDENTS!

Hey CNMT Exploring Computer Science Students,
The First and Best Lesson You'll Learn this Year! How to write for the web!

As we we find ourselves gearing to return from Winter-Break, I would like to take this opportunity to remind you of a couple of things. We will now be learning how to build our very own "cnmt student profile"-inspired websites. Of course this means all ECS students will have to "STEPITUP" BIGTIME!

As we return from break I be will updating this blog to keep in touch with you all, and I will also require some over the break participation in preparing and planning and writing on your part.

YES, I DID SAY WRITING!

All the text on your personal-websites will need to be original, well written copy for your websites.
You will need to produce an introduction to you site, as well as the necessary writing to accompany your autobiography page, your interests & hobbies page and your chosen career path page.

Start thinking about what content or "stuff" you are going to want to feature on you websites.
Please begin your written content by drafting short paragraphs 3-4 per page, so that when your return on Monday January 10th, we can discuss how to edit and improve your writing for your pages.

To start I would like you all to visit and read the following blog:

A Writer's Guide to Web Building

Also, see:

Writing for the Web: Part 1

Be sure to check back for updates.

Mr. Casas

Binary Art Project: Focus-The Arecibo Message

Hey ECS students,

Welcome back from our "Thanksgiving Break"
This week we will continue our Problem Solving Unit. The focus of our new project is creating an art image with a binary coding as a necessary part of the creation of the image. We will explore the relationship between binary code, visual symbols, visual data, and embedded messages.

The challenge of our project is to imagine if we had to develop a message for communicating with Extra-Terrestrial life forms using symbols, data and a personal message prepared for transmission into space using binary coding.

For review and further info and reading-please visit the following sites:

Prime Number (Mathematical Language to communicate)
The Arecibo Image-
SETI project
The Arecibo Message-Answered? (Youtube video)
The Documentary of Pixel Art (Youtube video)
Ancient Symbols and Meaning

AND JustfortheHECKOFIT-AREA 51 (WIKIPEDIA)



The discussions that have come-up have been very thoughtful-many interesting questions have surfaced in our discussions-I hope to hear more of your questions and thoughts as we proceed in this project.