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CS1, arcade games and the free Java book

Published: 10 March 2010 Publication History

Abstract

Computer game programming has been adopted by some instructors and schools in an effort to motivate students and make the learning more relevant to the student's world than the console programs many of their instructors learned with. This paper describes the author's experience teaching CS1 using the ACM Java library to write arcade game programs. An online book, the Free Java Book, has been written to support this approach. Experience over the last two years teaching with this approach will be shared and the book will be described.

References

[1]
deLact, M., Kuffner, J., Slattery, M., and Sweedyk, E. Panel Session: Computer Games and CS Education: Why and How. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Sixth SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE 2005), February 23-27, St. Louis, Missouri, 2005, 256--257.
[2]
Cliburn, D. The Effectiveness of Games as Assignments in an Introductory Programming Course. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Sixth ASEE/IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference (FIE 2006), October 28-31, San Diego, California, 2006.
[3]
Bayliss, J. Using Games in Introductory Courses: Tips from the Trenches. In Proceedings of the Fortieth SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE 2009), March 4-7, Chattanooga, Tennessee, 337--341, 2009.
[4]
Morrison, B. Engagement: Gaming throughout the Curriculum. In Proceedings of the Fortieth SIGCSE Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE 2009), March 4-7, Chattanooga, Tennessee, 342--346, 2009.
[5]
Kote, L., Anderson, S., Good, J., Pain, H. Learning by Game-Building. In Conference Proceedings of the 12th SIGCSE Annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education (ITCSE 2007), June 25-27, Dundee, Scotland, UK, 2007
[6]
Henriksend, P., Kölling, M. Greenfoot Invent - Program - Share, http://www.greenfoot.org
[7]
Carnegie Mellon University, Alice An Education Software that teaches students computer programming in a 3D environment, http://www.alice.org

Cited By

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  • (2021)Assessing Programming Skills and Knowledge During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Experience ReportProceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3430665.3456323(352-358)Online publication date: 26-Jun-2021
  • (2014)Contextualized learning toolsProceedings of the 2014 ACM Southeast Conference10.1145/2638404.2638458(1-6)Online publication date: 28-Mar-2014
  • (2013)Reading mobile games throughout the curriculumProceeding of the 44th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education10.1145/2445196.2445264(209-214)Online publication date: 6-Mar-2013
  • Show More Cited By

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cover image ACM Conferences
SIGCSE '10: Proceedings of the 41st ACM technical symposium on Computer science education
March 2010
618 pages
ISBN:9781450300063
DOI:10.1145/1734263
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Association for Computing Machinery

New York, NY, United States

Publication History

Published: 10 March 2010

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Author Tags

  1. acm java
  2. cs1
  3. free java book
  4. games

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Cited By

View all
  • (2021)Assessing Programming Skills and Knowledge During the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Experience ReportProceedings of the 26th ACM Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education V. 110.1145/3430665.3456323(352-358)Online publication date: 26-Jun-2021
  • (2014)Contextualized learning toolsProceedings of the 2014 ACM Southeast Conference10.1145/2638404.2638458(1-6)Online publication date: 28-Mar-2014
  • (2013)Reading mobile games throughout the curriculumProceeding of the 44th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education10.1145/2445196.2445264(209-214)Online publication date: 6-Mar-2013
  • (2013)Board game strategies in introductory computer scienceProceeding of the 44th ACM technical symposium on Computer science education10.1145/2445196.2445210(17-22)Online publication date: 6-Mar-2013

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