Using Greenfoot and Games to Teach Rising 9th and 10th Grade Novice Programmers

In a two-week residential game camp we used the Greenfoot IDE to teach java programming to rising 9(th) and 10(th) graders. Students created their own computer games which required learning how to write java programs, create a game design, and create art assets. In this paper we focus on the computer science pedagogy used and describe the initial design of an augmented game development framework for the Greenfoot environment. This framework includes classes for the following useful game elements: Animation, Projectiles, Side Scrolling Worlds, Text Boxes, Clocks and Timers. We describe these classes, discuss the effectiveness of each, and describe potential improvements to their implementation and design. We also report the results of a survey conducted during each of the camps.