Apple Summer Camp
Posted by Doug Thu, 08 Jun 2006 13:37:08 GMT
My oldest son, Josh, can go to Apple Summer Camp this year. I’ve signed him up for the Movie Workshop and iWeb Workshop.
“Summer Camp” is a bit of a misnomer. Each “camp” is 3 hours on one day. Since Josh is under 13, I’ll need to take off work to be there with him. It should be fun! The idea is to actually finish a project and take it home burned on DVD. Plus he gets a T-Shirt for each “camp” he goes to.
Oh, and Josh has been asking me about teaching him to write games. I’m not sure which direction do go here. I have so much respect for The Pragmatic Programmers I’m tempted to get Learn to Program. On the other hand, I’m also tempted to do something like Beginning Flash Game Programming for Dummies. I’ve heard good things about Learn to Program. I’d expect that it would give a good foundation in programming. But Flash is… well flashy. If you have any input on the subject of teaching pre-teens to program I’d love to hear it.
I picked up Learn to Program for my son,14, to do over the summer. It seems very clear and easy to use. Things are explained really well.
I’ll let you know how it goes.
Maybe a good place to start would be by skipping alot of the “deep algorithm” and programming theory stuff and skip to a Game Design system…
When I was that old, I played alot with ZZT ( http://autofish.net/creation/video_games/zzt/ ), and now there’s alot nicer stuff like Game Maker ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_Maker ). One of those might keep things fun & interesting, while keeping you from drowning in C Pointers or other stuff.
When I was about 10 or 12, I played with Basic on a programmable calculator to write a game or two…