by Dimple Jaiswal
Creative coders!
VAMPY not only gives students a chance to explore and learn different things, but it also gives me as a TA a chance to experience their innovative ideas.
The first day of Computer Science started with students learning the basics of JavaScript and decorating their ducks — Mr. Stagg gave all the students a little rubber duck to decorate in their own style so that they can talk with their duck in between classes. The ducks sparked the beginning of the course process of designing and developing. In this process, you imagine what you want to create, identify the requirements of what you want to create, build it, and then test it. This process is crucial for Computer Science students to understand.
Every student has been actively taking part in class activities and doing a great job. It has been quite exciting for me to interact with the students and learn about their great ideas, such as for creating electronic greeting cards for events like birthdays, Halloween, and Independence Day. By creating these interactive cards using JavaScript, they reached their first milestone. We had a great time doing a gallery walk where we examined each card, discussed how it was developed, and offered any concerns about bugs or recommendations for improvement.
The students’ passion and love for coding and gaming is absolutely fantastic. Last Thursday, we started brainstorming ideas for games and animation concepts, and the students had their different types of creative games partially completed by the end of the week. They not only enjoyed coding but also added different features to their games. I have now seen 13 different games that are based on collision mechanisms and have wonderful animation.
I am looking forward to having the students learn web development and game development using Unity and seeing even more of their creativity. They are fascinated by computer science and engineering — they are going to be awesome coders.
