[PRL] Fwd: Abstract

[Matthias Felleisen]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: "Shriram Krishnamurthi" <sk at cs.brown.edu>
> Date: July 2, 2006 9:48:58 PM EDT
> To: "Matthias Felleisen" <matthias at ccs.neu.edu>
> Subject: Fwd: Abstract
>
> Can you fwd to your group, in case anyone's interested?
> It'll be on July 21.
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: John Peterson <jpeterson at western.edu>
> Date: Jul 2, 2006 9:18 PM
> Subject: Abstract
> To: Shriram Krishnamurthi <sk at cs.brown.edu>
>
>
>
>   Using 3-D Computer Games to Attract High School Students to CS
>
> Like many departments, our CS department at Western State College  
> is facing
> declining enrolment.  To encourage more students to consider CS, we  
> have
> created a 1 week camp for high school students to get them excited  
> about our
> field and our department.  We used the Panda3D engine as the basis  
> for a
> simple game programming language that we call RPanda (Reactive  
> Panda).  This
> language is implemented as a library on top of Python, the  
> implementation
> language of Panda3D.  RPanda is based loosely on Functional Reactive
> Programming and (like frTime) addresses time flow in a simple and
> declarative manner.
>
> Our goal was to blend computer science, math, and physics  
> instruction within
> the context of a game engine.  We wanted to attract students with a  
> broad
> range of subject material.  The primary challenge was to present a  
> language
> simple enough that the programming task does not overwhelm students  
> with no
> computing background.  In addition, we wanted to bring the basic 3-D
> mathematics to the front instead of hiding math inside a drag and drop
> environment.
>
> In this talk I will discuss our experience with this year's  
> computer camp.
> I will address our experiences with the students (what they  
> learned, were
> interested in, and disliked), the curriculum (what we taught and  
> how we
> taught it), and the software.