Fai—Making/Playing Games and Computational Thinking

Many readings we've read so far suggest that game making lends itself to learning computational thinking. Because games are interactive—you don't know what exactly is going to happen in the game until someone plays it—creating games requires using lots of conditional logic, compared to, say, music videos whose script is determined in exact details by the creators. The activity of making games entails many opportunities to learn to use those programming concepts.

While we know that making games affords opportunities to learn programming / computational thinking, we don't know was much about what kinds of games and what kinds of game-making afford new ways of participating in programming. This is important when we think about computational participation. If we are using games which have certain cultural meanings and associations, we need to think about how to broaden those meanings and associations so that more people can learn programming through making games. 

In terms of learning content through making games, readings suggest that a typical approach is to make games that teach certain content / concepts. I think that is a great way to make student thinking visible, so that students can discuss and elaborate on their thinking. I also wonder about another approach: content is used in the game mechanics. This is in part what the science group wants to be able to do with the white blood cell games. Rather than making a game that teaches someone about white blood cells, how white blood cell works informs the game mechanics. While this seems like a trivial distinction, I wonder whether research findings that when you ask children to make a game that teaches such and such to younger kids, they can only think of multiple choices or direct instruction. These two approaches many orient students to different relationships between the content and the game mechanics.