Craft any magical spell you can imagine using the most powerful tool there is: code. CodeSpells is currently an unguided, sandbox experience for the bravest wizards who want to help the developers steer the game's development. If you are new to CodeSpells, you've come to the right place! We have lots of information on CodeSpells' history, lore, spellcrafting system, and much more! We're currently working on expanding and updating this database of knowledge, so please bear with us while we undergo changes. If you know anything that we don't have here, feel free to create an account and add it!
Computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego, have developed an immersive, first-person player video game designed to teach students in elementary to high school how to program in Java.
Code Spells is the creation of PhD students Sarah Esper and Stephen Foster who have built their game on the metaphor that Code is magical. The player is a magician who has lost their memory, their goal is to remember their spells (programs) and learn to make and execute new ones. The beta is currently downloadable for the Mac, with a Windows version due shortly.
This video introduces the games and you'll see how it uses Java:
CodeSpells' story line is simple: the player is a wizard who wakes up in a strange place populated by gnome-like creatures. She (or he) has been sent here to learn the ways of magic. The gnomes used to have magic, but lost it at some point. The wizard must help them. She writes spells in Java. Players have seven spells available to them, including levitating objects within the game, flying and making fire.
Players can also earn badges by undertaking simple quests, which help them master the game's spells. By the time players complete the game's first level, they have learned the main components of the Java programming language, such as parameters, for if statements, for loops and while loops, among other skills.
The researchers tested the game on a group of 40 girls, ages 10 to 12, who had never been exposed to programming before. As reported in a paper presented at the SIGCSE conference in March in Denver, within just one hour of play, the girls had mastered some of Java's basic components and were able to use the language to create new ways of playing with the game.
The research is being supervised by William Griswold of the the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego. Prompted by the fact teaching computer science below the college level is difficult, mainly because it is hard to find qualified instructors for students in elementary to high school, he and his graduate students set out to find a way to reach these students outside the classroom. They designed the game to keep children engaged while they are coping with the difficulties of programming, which could otherwise be frustrating and discouraging. They plan to release the game for free and make it available to any educational institution that requests it.
'Teaching children how to program must be a priority in a society where technology is becoming more and more important',
said Sarah Esper, who has been developing as part of her graduate studies. Co-developer Stephen Foster added:
'We're hoping that they will get as addicted to learning programming as they get addicted to video games.'
CodeSpells was influenced by research in which Esper and Foster surveyed 30 computer scientists and identified five characteristics that are key to learn programming outside a classroom setting: activities must be structured by the person who is trying to learn; learning must be creative and exploratory; programming is empowering; learners have difficulty stopping once they start; and learners spend countless hours on the activity.
Teaching programming through play is not a new idea but it has tended to be overlooked by teachers who tend to be reluctant to bring video games into the classroom. It seems a shame that these researchers are looking to use this resource outside the classroom when it clearly could have a role inside elementary and middle schools.
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Cool Tools
App Hacking
- Corona SDK Starter (PC & Mac) - mobile app software development kit
- jQuery Mobile (online) - touch-optimized framework to create mobile web pages
- MIT App Inventor (online) - create an Android app (Android emulator requires a download for PC or Mac)
- TouchDevelop(online) - create a mobile web game on your phone, tablet or desktop
Web Hacking
- Blogger (online) - blog-based website creator
- Color Picker (online) - find the hex value for your favorite color
- CSS3Gen (online) - generates some cool snippets of CSS effects
- Getting Tricky with Wikis (online) - ideas for customizing your wiki
- Hackasaurus X-ray Goggles (online) - remix your favorite webpage
- HTML Cheatsheet (online) - easy reference for HTML tags
- HTML 5 Cheatsheet (online) - HTML 5 is the latest & greatest version that adds more interactivity & multimedia
- JQuery Mobile (online) - create a mobile, touch-optimized web page
- JSBin (online) - a sandbox for trying out HTML, CSS & Javascript code
- Mockingbird (online) - create a mock-up or wireframe of how you would like to layout your website
- Mozilla Thimble (online) - tool to learn webmaking
- NameCheap (online) - domain name registration & web hosting
- safe web fonts (online) - list of fonts that work best for websites
- Weebly (online) - template-based website creator
- Wikispaces (online) - wiki-based website creator
- WordPress (online) - content management system-based website creator
Code Spells For Macular
Image Hacking- Big Huge Labs (online) - create a magazine cover, mosaic, movie poster and more
- Compfight (online) - a flickr search tool
- Creative Commons (online) - search for images you can reuse and remix
- CGTextures (online) - great site to find background image inspiration
- GIMP (open source) - advanced image editor
- Google SketchUp (PC & Mac) - 3D modeling
- InkScape (open source) - free vector graphics editor
- Paint.Net (PC) - awesome, free image editor
- Pickle (Mac & PC) - pixel editor
- piq (online) - draw pixel art
- Pixlr (online) - online photo editor
- Seashore (Mac) - simple image editor
- stock.xchng (online) - free stock photos
- SumoPaint (online) - image creator with lots of cool effects
Audio Hacking
- Audacity (PC & Mac) - sound recorder & editor
- Free Music Archive (online) - interactive library of high-quality, legal audio downloads
- Freesound (online) - collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, & recordings released under Creative Commons licenses
- Incompetech (online) - royalty free sound effects & full music tracks
- Jamendo (online) - creative commons music tracks
- Partners in Rhyme (online) - free sound effects
- Soundation (online) - generate 4 audio track sounds
- WolframTones (online) - tool to generate interesting sounds
Video Hacking
- Mozilla Popcorn Maker (online) - remix video & audio
- Picasion (online) - created an animated gif online
Game Hacking
- Alice (PC & Mac) - programming in a 3D environment (intermediate)
- Corona SDK (PC & Mac) - mobile game app software developer kit (advanced)
- Craftyy (online) - learn about making games with HTML 5 by remixing games
- Game Adventure Studio (PC) - bring your adventure game to life (intermediate)
- Gamestar Mechanic (online) - learn to create a game by playing a game (beginner)
- Game Maker Studio (PC & Mac) - game design platform to create casual, social games (advanced)
- Game Salad (PC & Mac) - game design engine for multiple platforms including mobile (advanced)
- PyGames (open source) - a set of Python modules designed for writing games
- Scratch (online) - create and share interactive stories, games, music and art (beginner)
- SketchNation (iPad) - draw your game to life
- Stencyl (PC & Mac) - web and mobile game creator (intermediate)
- Twine (PC & Mac) - create your own interactive adventure game (intermediate)
- Unreal Engine (PC) - 3D game making developer kit (advanced)
- Unity (PC & Mac) - 3D game design engine (advanced)
Code Spells For Macular Degeneration
Code Hacking
The researchers tested the game on a group of 40 girls, ages 10 to 12, who had never been exposed to programming before. As reported in a paper presented at the SIGCSE conference in March in Denver, within just one hour of play, the girls had mastered some of Java's basic components and were able to use the language to create new ways of playing with the game.
The research is being supervised by William Griswold of the the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego. Prompted by the fact teaching computer science below the college level is difficult, mainly because it is hard to find qualified instructors for students in elementary to high school, he and his graduate students set out to find a way to reach these students outside the classroom. They designed the game to keep children engaged while they are coping with the difficulties of programming, which could otherwise be frustrating and discouraging. They plan to release the game for free and make it available to any educational institution that requests it.
'Teaching children how to program must be a priority in a society where technology is becoming more and more important',
said Sarah Esper, who has been developing as part of her graduate studies. Co-developer Stephen Foster added:
'We're hoping that they will get as addicted to learning programming as they get addicted to video games.'
CodeSpells was influenced by research in which Esper and Foster surveyed 30 computer scientists and identified five characteristics that are key to learn programming outside a classroom setting: activities must be structured by the person who is trying to learn; learning must be creative and exploratory; programming is empowering; learners have difficulty stopping once they start; and learners spend countless hours on the activity.
Teaching programming through play is not a new idea but it has tended to be overlooked by teachers who tend to be reluctant to bring video games into the classroom. It seems a shame that these researchers are looking to use this resource outside the classroom when it clearly could have a role inside elementary and middle schools.
More Information
Related Articles
To be informed about new articles on I Programmer, install the I Programmer Toolbar, subscribe to the RSS feed, follow us on, Twitter,Facebook, Google+ or Linkedin, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.
Comments
or email your comment to: comments@i-programmer.info
| The State Of Secure Software Development - Three OpenSSF Courses 23/11/2020 The Open Source Security Foundation has recently launched three brand new and free courses on Secure Software Development, which are hosted on edX. |
| PHP 8.0 Adds Metadata To Classes 08/12/2020 There's a major new release of PHP with improvements including a nullsafe operator and attributes enabling the use of structured metadata with PHP's native syntax. |
| More News |
Cool Tools
App Hacking- Corona SDK Starter (PC & Mac) - mobile app software development kit
- jQuery Mobile (online) - touch-optimized framework to create mobile web pages
- MIT App Inventor (online) - create an Android app (Android emulator requires a download for PC or Mac)
- TouchDevelop(online) - create a mobile web game on your phone, tablet or desktop
Web Hacking
- Blogger (online) - blog-based website creator
- Color Picker (online) - find the hex value for your favorite color
- CSS3Gen (online) - generates some cool snippets of CSS effects
- Getting Tricky with Wikis (online) - ideas for customizing your wiki
- Hackasaurus X-ray Goggles (online) - remix your favorite webpage
- HTML Cheatsheet (online) - easy reference for HTML tags
- HTML 5 Cheatsheet (online) - HTML 5 is the latest & greatest version that adds more interactivity & multimedia
- JQuery Mobile (online) - create a mobile, touch-optimized web page
- JSBin (online) - a sandbox for trying out HTML, CSS & Javascript code
- Mockingbird (online) - create a mock-up or wireframe of how you would like to layout your website
- Mozilla Thimble (online) - tool to learn webmaking
- NameCheap (online) - domain name registration & web hosting
- safe web fonts (online) - list of fonts that work best for websites
- Weebly (online) - template-based website creator
- Wikispaces (online) - wiki-based website creator
- WordPress (online) - content management system-based website creator
Code Spells For Macular
Image Hacking- Big Huge Labs (online) - create a magazine cover, mosaic, movie poster and more
- Compfight (online) - a flickr search tool
- Creative Commons (online) - search for images you can reuse and remix
- CGTextures (online) - great site to find background image inspiration
- GIMP (open source) - advanced image editor
- Google SketchUp (PC & Mac) - 3D modeling
- InkScape (open source) - free vector graphics editor
- Paint.Net (PC) - awesome, free image editor
- Pickle (Mac & PC) - pixel editor
- piq (online) - draw pixel art
- Pixlr (online) - online photo editor
- Seashore (Mac) - simple image editor
- stock.xchng (online) - free stock photos
- SumoPaint (online) - image creator with lots of cool effects
Audio Hacking
- Audacity (PC & Mac) - sound recorder & editor
- Free Music Archive (online) - interactive library of high-quality, legal audio downloads
- Freesound (online) - collaborative database of audio snippets, samples, & recordings released under Creative Commons licenses
- Incompetech (online) - royalty free sound effects & full music tracks
- Jamendo (online) - creative commons music tracks
- Partners in Rhyme (online) - free sound effects
- Soundation (online) - generate 4 audio track sounds
- WolframTones (online) - tool to generate interesting sounds
Video Hacking
- Mozilla Popcorn Maker (online) - remix video & audio
- Picasion (online) - created an animated gif online
Game Hacking
- Alice (PC & Mac) - programming in a 3D environment (intermediate)
- Corona SDK (PC & Mac) - mobile game app software developer kit (advanced)
- Craftyy (online) - learn about making games with HTML 5 by remixing games
- Game Adventure Studio (PC) - bring your adventure game to life (intermediate)
- Gamestar Mechanic (online) - learn to create a game by playing a game (beginner)
- Game Maker Studio (PC & Mac) - game design platform to create casual, social games (advanced)
- Game Salad (PC & Mac) - game design engine for multiple platforms including mobile (advanced)
- PyGames (open source) - a set of Python modules designed for writing games
- Scratch (online) - create and share interactive stories, games, music and art (beginner)
- SketchNation (iPad) - draw your game to life
- Stencyl (PC & Mac) - web and mobile game creator (intermediate)
- Twine (PC & Mac) - create your own interactive adventure game (intermediate)
- Unreal Engine (PC) - 3D game making developer kit (advanced)
- Unity (PC & Mac) - 3D game design engine (advanced)
Code Spells For Macular Degeneration
Code Hacking- App Inventor (online) - create an Android app
- Blockly (online) - program your way through a maze and other blockly apps
- Cargo-Bot (iOS) - puzzle game to learn coding concepts
- CodeAvengers (online) - another fun Javascript tutorial
- Code Maven (online) - very visual Javascript tutorial
- CodeSpells (Mac) - learn to program by crafting your own magic spells
- Hackety Hack (PC & Mac) - learn Ruby programming
- Hopscotch (iPad) - intro to programming with blocks
- Khan Academy Code Editor (online) - code runs while you edit plus lots of video tutorials
- light-Bot (online, iOS & Android) - puzzle game to learn coding concepts
- Processing (open source) - learn programming fundamentals within a visual context
- Robo Rally (online) - a robo rally programming game (select Examples of Play -> Mini Rally Training Ground)
- TryRuby (online) - got 15 minutes? Give Ruby a shot.
Storytelling
- AnimatorDV Simple (PC) - stop motion animation software
- FramebyFrame (Mac) - stop motion animation software
- glogster (online) - create interactive posters with images, movies, sound & text
- Mozilla Popcorn Maker (online) - enhance, remix & share web videos
- Pencil Animation (PC) - traditional 2D animation software
- StopMotion Cafe (iPhone & iPad) - stop motion animation software
- VoiceThread (online) - tell a story online
