Re: Re: [pygame] Students Interested in Pygames Community

[James Paige <Bob@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I remember once running into my 7th grade math teacher. She asked me 
what I was doing these days, and I told her about my game-programming 
hobby, and I went on to explain how I often used things I learned in Jr 
High math class in game making. I told her how I used the pythagorean 
theorum all the time for calculating the distance between a character 
and an enemy in a 2D game, and she got really excited about it, 
confessing that she had been discouraged when kids asked her when they 
were going to actually use these math concepts she was teaching, and she 
didn't have good examples to tell them.

I remember all through school, math concepts were always explained in 
terms of fruit-counting, carpentry, and train schedules, and none of 
that ever made even the tiniest emotional impact on me. That contrasts 
strongly to how excited I got about math AFTER I learned to program.

---
James Paige

On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 07:34:44AM -0400, Joe Ranalli wrote:
>    Besides the programming aspects, one of the great things is that it
>    teaches about the sciences as well.  Even the most trivial games require
>    use of basic physics concepts like vector math and the laws of motion, and
>    require mathematical integration for the time stepping.  Game programming
>    is a great educational vehicle for lots of reasons.
> 
>    On Fri, Oct 21, 2011 at 1:54 AM, Ian Mallett <geometrian@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
>      Hi,
>      I find simple games are helpful in teaching students.  With practice,
>      one can hack up a very simple game in Python/PyGame in a matter of a few
>      minutes.  At the end, people have a product to show for it.
>      I often find students have a good time making games too, because it's
>      surprisingly open-ended.  It also works at many levels of programming
>      expertise, because games can vary in complexity.
>      Ian