One interesting suggestion I received from a viewer out there about the Joy of Code video series is to make the videos downloadable, because YouTube is blocked in a number of schools.
That seems like an obviously good idea, so I’ve done that now. Under every Joy of Code video, you will now see a download link. (On some (most?) systems, just clicking the link plays the video in the browser, so right-click, and choose “Save Link As…” or the equivalent option in your browser.)
Another advantage of this is that you can play the video in its original resolution (without up- or down-scaling), which should give you good high-def clear text on screen.
Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment; full effort is full victory. — Mahatma Gandhi
Things are start to heat up in our scenario: Snakes are chasing Trick (the turtle) over the plane. (That’s, of course, ‘plane’ as in ‘flat bit of ground’, not as in ‘flying thing’).
Below is a version of the scenario to download as it is so far (at the end of this episode). If you haven’t been coding along with the previous episodes, but want to start here, use this version.
The person who knows HOW will always have a job, but the person who knows WHY will always be his/her boss. — Anonymous
Trying a different presentation style for a change (in an attempt to speed things up a bit), today we’ll do a quick run through first, followed by some explanation.
And what we’re doing is giving our turtle something to eat. Have a look.
The solution of every problem is another problem. — Goethe
Setting off on our path to create a little computer game, today we look into random behaviour. Random events are, of course, very important for games. If everything were entirely predictable, many games would be boring.
So, sit back and watch to see how we get Trick the Turtle to stagger around randomly.
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master — that’s all.’
— Lewis Carroll, Through The Looking Glass
Welcome back to the teachers out there. Here are a few remarks about Episodes 4 and 5 of the Joy of Code series.
If you have any questions or comments, let me know in the comments section here on the blog, and I will respond to them in the next episode of the teacher commentary.
Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of becoming. — Goethe
So, here we go, the first instalment of a Teacher Commentary.
If, you may ask, this is the first one, why then is it called “Teacher Commentary 3”?
Fair question, but there is method in this madness. I have decided to number them not sequentially, but in sync with the main Joy of Code episodes. Each Teacher Commentary will get the number of the episode it refers to. Since this commentary talks about episode 3, it is Teacher Commentary 3 (or TC-3, as I will soon start to call them in the headings).
Sometimes the teacher commentaries may not be tightly associated with an episode, but they will still fit in somewhere in the sequence, so they will get whatever number we’re up to in the main episode sequence.
One more rhetorical question before we get to the video: What is a “teacher commentary”?
The TC videos are meant for people who are not only concerned with learning object-oriented programming, or Greenfoot, or Java, but with teaching it. It talks to you as a teacher.
If you are not a teacher, you’re of course welcome to look at it as well, but I’m not sure how interesting this will be for you. Maybe your time is better spent moving on to the next main episode. (You won’t miss anything important.) Your choice.
