In my Game Development II class today, we were learning about the Math class in Java. Of course, this quickly went off topic as I had to explain, again, the importance of math in game development. Once I got the train back on the track and made it through my demo, I explained what the exercises were. I had four different examples of coding using the Math class. I put the students into groups of four and assigned each student one of the exercises.

The students were temporarily relieved that they were only going to have to code one of the four, but that feeling of relief didn’t last long. The students were instructed to explain their exercise to the other group members. I had told the class that they would be presenting an exercise, but it would not be theirs. I would randomly pick an exercise that they had not personally coded to present to the class and I would grade the entire group on how well the presentations went. The chorus of groans was loud and students were asking why was I doing this to them.

I had told them that they were pretty good at getting code to work, but their commenting skills within the code was lacking. I added that if you cannot explain the code and how it works to one of your teammates, do you really understand what you are doing. The students completed the coding portion before lunch and I told them after lunch they would have time to explain the code to the rest of the team. The students came back from lunch and were quickly huddling around each team members project as they explained what was happening in the code. Once the students started to get off track, I announced it was time to start presenting.

I didn’t want to spend the rest of the class period with student rehashing out the same example over and over again so I picked one student for each example. The example they used was my answer key without the comments explaining the code. This threw the presenters off because when they were taught the exercise from a team member, the focus was on using the comments to explain the code and not looking at the code itself. The presenters rebounded well once they took a breath and looked at the code. In the end, they did a good job presenting the exercise.

My goal today wasn’t to trip up the presenters. It was to get the students to be more effective in commenting their code because they had been getting lazy as of late. The second goal was to get the students to understand what the code actually does and to explain it to someone else so that they understand it. I could have done this differently by checking the comments more thoroughly in the code and ask more questions during a presentation, but this gave the students an opportunity to teach and communicate to their peers on a topic outside of the normal high school student conversation.

My students will email members in the game industry to get advice on their designs or clarifications on tutorials they find and they usually copy me in the email. It is not unusual for me to receive these emails. On Thursday, I was a little surprised at the email that a student copied me on. The student emailed the district’s chief technology officer (CTO) to request that a game engine get unblocked at our school so that his group can complete their senior capstone project.

This is a site that I have tried to get unfiltered through the normal channels with no progress. To be fair, teachers are submitting sites on a daily basis that should be unblocked that would benefit more students than this one site that would benefit four students. At first, I was a little concerned because this student has tried to bypass multiple layers of bureaucracy by going straight to the top without informing me in advance.

I forwarded the email to my principal to give her a heads-up in case the CTO emailed her asking why her students were emailing her directly. She had replied back that the email was awesome and the student had earned the right to email the CTO. Last year, this student had created an intro video for a technology conference we hosted for 200 7th graders. The CTO was in one of the sessions, saw the video, and was talking to me about how great the video was. I told her that the student who created it was sitting right behind her. The CTO turned around, introduced herself to the student, handed him a business card, and told him to email her about a summer internship with the district. He did take her up on the offer and still works there during the week.

At Southwest CTA, we grade our students based on six tenets that we think will fairly grade the all-around abilities of students and best prepare them for college and a career. One of those tenets we grade is “use of resources.” It is something that we encourage on every assignment, project, and presentation. My principal reminded me that the student was just using the resources he had available to him to advocate for something that he needed to further his education. Despite my concerns about going above everyone’s head to get the site unblocked, he was utilizing a skill that we have been teaching our students for the last three years. We won’t know for a few days if his email worked, but I am proud of what he has tried to do to improve his group’s capstone project.