Hi all,
For my application to unversity, it requires me to write on my hobbies and what I have accomplished. My hobbie is computer game creation. But I haven’t created any games :?
So, Ive decided to create my own after school club to teach students simple java stuff and at the end, i shall introduce them to jME and perhaps recreate Pong or asteroids or something.
So does anyone have any pointers for me when im up there?
PS. We’re literally starting from the basics.
PS2. I have around 20 children!
DP
Tell them to sit down and shut up, hit them with rulers when they are misbehaving.
Make sure you give yourself time to prepare before each class or it will be apparent to the students. Do they already know any programming? If not, you’re going to have to start at the beginning and writing a game may have to wait for several lessons.
I’ve done volunteer teaching on weekends for a local high school for a few years, so I’ve been where you’re going now. Start with why they should learn java. Talk about machine independance and OO design, just for a little bit. Then move onto hello world. Let them learn from example. If you can, talk/teach a little bit then let them code what you talked about. Then go back to talking some more, then let them code that. If they don’t code what you say, it’ll go in one ear and out the other.
hehe, XD il get something harder than a ruler! A football post!
For the first lesson, I was hoping to do some fundemental stuff like Classes, Methods, variables. Even what objects are.
Second, make a simple sysout program, perhaps a sysin as well. Make a little robot exploration program.
Third, introduce the jME API, its goals…etc, show them some of the demos. Go through the a simple jME program. Perhaps even delay that more depending on the level of the kids.
Thats the plan anyway, are those reasonable assumptions to make?
PS3, the lessons are 1 hour long
DP
If they don’t have any programming experience, starting out with classes, methods, and variables is probably going to be a bit overwhelming.
If they know algebra, I might start with that… go over the order-of-operations and variables… see how they take it. Talk about OO design a bit… just theoretical stuff so they can get an idea of how programs work without worrying about the details. One thing my classes always lacked was -WHY- things were done the way they were (granted, these were C++ classes where you could actually do things non-OO if you wanted to…) That will probably take you through the first lesson, but it’ll depend on how much detail you go into.
Next lesson, I’d refresh their memories for 5 minutes about OO design, then start explaining how that works with code. Talk about classes and methods, but not in too much detail. Just talk about a single class as your ‘program’ and having a ‘main’ method. No constructors or anything… Go through the ‘hello world’ thing in main, and let them do it so they can get a feel for it.
You’ll probably need to spend some time about how to set things up so they can actually run a java program before you let them go, though.
Basically, I’d suggest taking incremental steps, and like Cep said, get them to actually WRITE the code and figure that out. Otherwise, it’ll never stick.
My .02.
–K
thx cep, i missed your post, because we sorta posted at the same time 
Il keep the talk/teach thing in mind when I do so.
I was thinking of for the first lesson, make them pick something concrete they can see and "describe" it in OO terms and then tell them what goes in, what goes out. Then perhaps we could start to code those objects they talk about in "their" language and then convert it to java.
Then perhaps even create a little program that uses their created class. Ofcourse, they have to wait till they learn java, methods, objects…etc. So its going to have to wait a few lessons first.
The lessons are till July the 3rd I think, we got a few weeks to kill
Who knows, maybe I could even make em write me the sound modules for my game 
DP