Sunday 18 August 2013

Coding homework

Have been given this for homework

http://computerscienceclub.org/raidarrays/raid.html

This is a simple game that asks the user to change the status of a image, the aim is to make the black boxes even. This is a simple parity check to see wether there is issues with a hard drive or that data has been transmitted properly.
The following are screen shots of the game in action. It starts off getting the user to interact to provide an experience of what is required, This requires two clicks, to change the state to black and then to white.














Then please respond to the following questions
1: Do you think your students could play this game without prior instructions?
Yes, as most games on mobile devices now show the user how to interact, there is not much difference between this and other applications

2: Do you think your students could learn from this game, if accompanied by an appropriate discussion?
The error checking is simple, being able to quickly compare data.

3: Do you think your students would find this game motivating?
At the start, but there is a logical conclusion. You can only run the game so many times before you cannot get any higher on the best score. But will they realise the final outcomes,

The education at the start: This might seems like a strange thing to do, but it is a technique used in major data centres like Google and Facebook... Carry on to find out more

At the end there is text at the bottom which reads, Big data centres have thousands of hard disks in the, and each day several are likely to fail.. carry on to find out more.

This is not clickable, or does it take you to any more information to allow it to be used as an informative way.

4: Do you (did you?) think this game is easily accessible, or would you prefer a different format, such as an unplugged game?
Easy accessible, and runs quickly. responsive. For me personally its does look csunplugged already with the simple graphics. It already looks like the parity game.
One thing that I found with it was that it was easier when the questioned block was beside the black squares than when it was further away. Also within the first three questions it provides you a easy way to figure out if they are right.


Yet later in the game the even section is removed


5: This game Teaches a bit about raid arrays, however the gameplay may outlive the educational content. Do you think the game's replayability should be artificially shortened?
Yes, add in more hard drives to check, bigger raids, how many drives could you check before it caused issues?
What is the differences between RAID levels?


Right, just worked out what this is for, http://computerscienceclub.org/ which is also in development.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I like the idea of making the information clickable. BTW, the game was put on the CS club site just because it was a quick and easy way to do things; it will end up in the Field Guide, which in turn will be used by NCEA students *and* the CS club!