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COMPUTER
CREATIONS
COURSE OVERVIEW
This course is
recommended for students who have grade level reading
and writing skills,
as well as the ability to work independently. This is a self-paced,
applications and project-oriented course. Students will
design
a series of animations, create academic teaching programs
that can be used in their core classes and design interactive
computer games. There will be a final project where students
will work in teams like professional computer programmers
in collaboration to produce a final project. Students
will "roll out" their "products" to
the public on presentation day at the end of the semester.
Students will
be using FlashMX, iMovie, PhotoShop, GarageBand, Alice, and
more. They will learn how to program text, sound, create
3D
animation,
music
and
create
and
import
graphics in
various
forms.
ASSIGNMENTS
You
will be spending the first few weeks working on
developing your programming skills. There are three
basic units of study.
The
skill projects are designed to teach you basic
programming and graphics concepts, and to familiarize
you with how you can "instruct" the computer
to "produce" what you tell it to by using
specific computer "language." These include
1) the Walking Guy, with new parameters; 2) the
Pyramid Animation, which further develops your
skills using buttons and layers in Flash Mx; and
3) the Dungeon, which prepares you for working
in multiple pages and gaming environments. Each of these will be turned in to the course dropbox; see Dr. Forte for the correct labeling for each.
You will also complete a series of 6 drawing tutorials designed to help you become a better Flash artist. You will turn in all of these in one folder labeled "<yourname>'s Tutorials".
The
completion date for the introduction assignments
will be approximately three weeks into the semester.
Once you have
completed the skill units, you will work in Alice
3.0 to develop a 3-dimensional world and learn
about the structure of Java. See the project parameters
in the Course Documents of InClass. The project
includes at least two locations in the world, animated
characters, clickable events, and movement through
the world. This project will take approximately
3 weeks to complete.
You
can see examples of previous Alice worlds by going
HERE.
The
next project is one that will require you to
do some research into a topic of your choice.
It is called the Academic
Resource Project and will be worth
50% of your class grade. Make sure that you have
checked with the teacher before you begin. You
may use the library, Internet or the eLibrary.
Refer to the project requirements sheet in your
InClass Course Documents for details, and refer
to the Grading
Rubric before
you start. This project will be due about one
month before the end of the semester; in Fall,
right before Thanksgiving break; in Spring, early
May.
* There
will be a chance to earn extra credit by
having your project used by another student.
See the teacher for details.
You
will start the final project activity approximately
4 weeks before the end of the semester. The project
will
be a team effort to design a programming
project
of your choice,
based on the new skills and knowledge that you
learned in the class. You can work in pairs or
groups of three-- no more than that! Some examples
are an interactive computer game, interactive
game
in
TrueBasic involving
random integers, a multi-level web page modeled
after WebQuest which includes 2D animation and
Java scripting, etc.
This
is a project that may require research. You may
use
the library,
Internet or the eLibrary. Refer to the project
requirements sheet in your InClass Course Documents
for details. You will create a storyboard and/or
templates
for
the
project
and
get it approved by the teacher before beginning
construction. You will also complete a rubric at
the end establishing
your contributions to the whole project and analyzing
your end product.
The
project is due a week before the end of the semester.
It will be scheduled for public viewing
during the final week.
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