Development of creative applications with assets of a video game

• Autor(a) principal: Rito, P. N.
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.19/6579
• topic: Creative code; Teaching; Code lines; Videogames

Students enrolled in the course of Arts and Multimedia usually have difficulties and show some resistance in learning to write lines of code. This document presents a contribution to the learning of these lines of code through an orientation based on the development of creative applications with nuances of a videogame Computers are part of a student's life, most of whom have experience using computers to play games, use search engines, participate in social networks, use applications such as word processors, or to establish synchronous communications with others people. It is also found that young people read and write to new media installed on web sites (Peppler, 2010). Videogames are one of the topics that have received more attention from educators, since they are particularly active elements to call and captivate students for long periods of time. There are several references on the use of commercial video games or simulators in the classroom since the introduction of ICT in the educational context, but the interest of this document is to reflect on the development of applications with nuances of video games in the classroom. These applications are built through a library of the Java programming language named Processing. The use of Processing makes it easier for its users to learn and use these lines of code, for example the result of the use of structures or cycles can be visualized immediately through their application in objects previously "drawn" or with external objects such as photo files or videos. The programming concepts that are taught are introductory, but they allow students to gain the necessary knowledge about procedural programming. It is possible to verify and conclude that: during the semester they are able to develop interesting applications and with the worries related to the design of video games; not all students are committed to continuing or deepening knowledge in this area, but there have been cases of those seeking masters or other informal courses that allow them to deepen knowledge for the development of this kind of creative applications; and is recognized by the direction of the course and external entities that evaluated the current scenario that there is a need for this type of knowledge to be disseminated for the remaining school years, with emphasis from the first year. It is important to understand that efforts to include creative code in the academic curriculum of courses in this area are not intended to turn students into programmers or to replace "traditional" arts-related contexts. It is important to learn the language of creative code to communicate in the digital world, since it is increasingly important for young people and society in general. Code construction by these students has to be seen as a design process, an act of free speech and a digital production method, The purpose of this work is to obtain information about the use and utility of a library in processing for the development of an application with nuances of a game. How do students recognize the value of using this library? What difficulties did they encounter? What added value they have identified for their future work.This information will be collected through a questionnaire and then with semi-structured interviews.