Douglas Mcgregor is a primary school teacher who made programming lessons more fun for pupils by introducing them to Arcade Game Designer and seeing where their creativity went from there
Where did the idea of using Arcade Game Designer in the classroom come from?
I have been developing the teaching of programming for several years. Although there are many excellent tools out there to help build coding skills, there is no major end product to bring all of these skills together and apply them in order to create something new and imaginative.
Through my own interest in the ZX Spectrum homebrew scene, I had played several games coded with AGD, therefore I set about creating a game myself – which is where came from. I shared each stage with my class and asked for their advice while talking them through the code that I was using and how it all worked.
And is this something you would recommend for other educators to try?
I couldn’t recommend it highly enough. It engaged every one of my pupils and really captured their imaginations. It enhanced their computational thinking skills substantially. Pupils had to constantly analyse and evaluate their code and level design. The artistic pupils loved the art and animation side while those with a passion for logical thinking appreciated the coding and debugging problem-solving process.
It is a wonderful free resource which can be worked on at school and at home.
And how did the children take to designing games on older microcomputers?
The pupils were incredibly excited about it. We played some old ZX Spectrum games for inspiration which showed them they were making something tangible and real. It wasn’t a case of copying some code to make something happen. Instead they learned a skill and then applied that to create something which was completely their own. This ownership and pride in what they were making was where the engagement came from which in turn made them far more likely to remember the code and appreciate exactly how and why it worked.
This depth of understanding gave them the confidence to edit their code as required and to create new code to enhance their games. As their games took form, their programming skills grew with them. What can be learnt from developing on machines like the ZX Spectrum today? Modern technology has come a long way in the last 37 years but the basic concepts of coding and how a computer understands commands remains the same. Every skill learnt is transferable to modern programming languages. More than that, though, it shows pupils that all you need is a good idea and some hard work and you can create your own game. Several of my pupils are already experimenting with different game development tools having been inspired by our project.
Finally, are there any more compilations of pupil-developed games on the way?
I hope to continue to use Arcade Game Designer with my new class next year, but I have also written a guide for others to follow and I am due to deliver a presentation for other teachers in the new term to share my experiences and hopefully inspire them to start coding on the ZX Spectrum with their own classes.