I had an email from Pat Yongpradit over New Year’s week end. Pat is an award winning high school computer science teacher whose students do impressive work under his guidance. Pat has been using XNA game studio in his school for some time. He uses XNA and games for Zune pocket devices in an after school program to encourage girls to develop an interest in computer science. He uses XNA and Xbox type games with his regular classes and even has students entering the Imagine Cup game competition. Last year one of his student teams made it to the US Imagine Cup finals. More recently Pat have been teaching Windows Phone 7 development. As a result of this he sent me this top 7 list and offered it to me as material for a blog post. I’ve tried to add some useful detail and some related links.
- All the development tools are free (Visual Studio Express and XNA Game Studio). You can use the free Express Edition of C# or join the MSDN AA program for professional level tools for use in the classroom and to send home with students. Yes, there are free development tools available for some other platforms but these are both professional strength AND useful for developing for more than just phones
- Marketplace access is free for students ($99 value) through Microsoft's Dreamspark program. Students do not have to pay to submit applications to the Windows Phone 7 or Xbox Marketplace online store programs. This combined with free development tools means that many students can try their products in the marketplace of real world applications at no cost. There is some incentive to put some polish on a project!
- Free and more importantly, excellent textbooks have been written by a funny guy (Rob Miles) Rob is a lecturer at the University of Hull and a frequent speaker at tech conferences. He also has a sense of humor. I have always found that students respond well to humor and find a lot of textbooks dry and boring. This is not much an issue with these materials which are also technically very sharp.
https://www.facultyresourcecenter.com/curriculum/pfv.aspx?ID=8119&Login=
https://www.facultyresourcecenter.com/curriculum/pfv.aspx?ID=8729&Login= - Java and C# syntax is very similar. This has benefits in two ways.One one hand if your students already know Java they will find C# a piece of cake. They can focus on the Phone development parts without a struggle to learn a completely new programming language. On the other hand if you use a Windows Phone 7 programming course before you move to Java your students will also find it an easy transition. I know one high school student who passed the AP exam knowing only C# which he mostly learned on his own.
- Deployment to a Windows Phone 7 or Zune is handled through the IDE. It is actually just a couple clicks, and voila! Two more steps and you can stick it on an Xbox!
- Built in emulator. With the emulator built in to the IDE testing applications is a simple step with great debugging tools. This means you don’t have to have a phone for everyone and you don’t have to have a separate and secondary testing/debugging environment.
- A national and international competition, the Imagine Cup, exists to celebrate XNA and Windows Phone 7 development. We’ve seen some impressive work from high school students in this competition. One HS Windows Phone team won at the world-wide level last year.
A bonus is that once you know XNA, a variety of peripherals can be used for additional projects on Windows or the Xbox. Try Xbox gamepads, Guitar Hero controllers, dance pads, steering wheels, and in the future? Well, we’ll have to wait and see I guess.
Young people are all about the phones these days. XNA (or Silverlight for that matter) allow students to learn a great deal while creating applications for an environment – phones – that matters to them. It just may help you interest more students in your curriculum.
BTW see also Randy Guthrie's Summary of Windows Phone 7 App Development Resources
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