From the Classroom to Real Life

Russell Gordon’s Grade 10 Introduction to Computer Science class took their in-class studies out into the real world to with a group of Grade 4 students at a local elementary school to build a custom educational app to their specifications.

"When I first visited the students at Lakefield District Public School, the topic just somehow drifted to Star Wars. The three kids in my group were avid Star Wars fans. My head quickly filled with the names of characters, monsters and planets that they had sent me off with, I went back and started reading all the plot summaries of the star wars movies and drafting a game that would embody the spirit of Star Wars. My game is called The Search for Allana Solo, it is an Alice created game where a Jedi Padawan is sent to a jungle planet to find a missing girl. He searches throughout the jungle and can stop to talk to people to obtain clues. There are also monsters that you must kill to save the missing girl. The game is controlled using the keyboard, you move using the arrow keys and you kill using the enter key. The kids were sweet and very enthusiastic to play and give me feedback on my game, all of the times I have been there I have spent nearly fifty minutes with a smile on my face. Overall, this project has been a fun and interesting learning experience! -Nicole Liu ’21

“The game I made for my students at LDPS is a Mario Themes 2D Treasure Map Hunt. The player moves around using the arrow keys on a cartesian grid. They travel to different parts of the map and are given math questions in order to get points and advance in the game. The game teaches the player about coordinates on a grid and basic multiplication. So far, we have visited LDPS three times as a class. The first time we gathered ideas for what they wanted us to create, the second time we showed them our plan for our game and the third time, we showed them a minimum viable product and got suggestions for what to improve. We are going to LDPS one last time, to show off our final product!” -Scott Doggett ’21

Other students shared, "For me, this culminating task was more meaningful, because I got to actually talk to people and it felt like I was really communicating with a user. Being with kids who have a lot of ideas was also helpful because then I could make my game more specific." and "This culminating task was more meaningful because it was more interesting and realistic. I felt like I was doing a real job and I loved working with the kids."