Weeknote 17/2024
Hello!
This week seems to be all about improvements.
The highlight of the weekend was driving down to Dundee Ice Arena to see Aberdeen Lynx take on Edinburgh Capitals in the Scottish Cup Final. It was a fantastic game which Lynx dominated from the off, scoring their first of 9 goals in just 27 seconds. The final score of 9-3 demonstrated just how much the Lynx team have improved since their heartbreaking last minute defeat in the final last season. When they are at full strength the team can play some fantastic hockey. The additional seating compared to Aberdeen’s rink also allowed a much larger turnout which made for a better atmosphere. It would be great if the upcoming rebuild of the Lynx Ice Arena could take some lessons from this great venue.
The main focus of work this week was creating programming assessments for the S2 classes. I have been teaching them using CodeMonkey and embedding computational thinking lessons alongside the practical tasks to see if this improves their understanding of the skills needed to solve problems with code. Of course, because CodeMonkey asks students to solve problems in a visual space, I needed to create my own similar problem visuals for the assessments. I had a lot of fun building these in Google Slides!
I’ve also been working on improving my Fortnite Bragging Rights program so that we can use it with the Esports club to track improving players (if they agree). For data protection (and because it’s only really useful in the Esports club) the Flask app is hosted on a Raspberry Pi velcroed to the Hackable Classroom wall. Students can have a look at their progress by going to a local IP address which is displayed next to the device.
This has been generating a lot of discussion around how to improve KPG (kills per game) as well as around how long some players are spending on the game at weekends. I think it’s going to be a very useful tool in the club!
Later in the week, the house was quieter as my son was out on his practice Bronze Duke of Edinburgh expedition. The group did well, even in the sub-zero morning temperatures, and although he was very hungry by the end of the second day I was quite impressed at how well they coped with the challenge. They have a few weeks to reflect on their attempt, act on any changes required and then plan the next expedition which will take place in mid-May in hopefully much better weather.
Like the rest of the world who have access to Amazon Prime (or know their way around a torrent site), I’ve been getting into the Fallout series. I haven’t played the game in years but this does not matter too much as the story is a reimagining of the game universe. I am in love with the retro-futurism: the green-screen terminals, gadgets and robots that seem to be straight from an episode of the Jetsons. I’m not going to go into the back story here but highly recommend you watch the trailer posted below if you haven’t already. Walton Goggins is captivating as Cooper Howard / The Ghoul and Ella Purnell, who was one year old when the original Fallout game was released, is a strong and striking lead. I’m three episodes in but think that I’ll finish the season in a burst of inactivity soon enough!
It’s probably the first game tie-in series that I’ve enjoyed. It made me want to go off and get involved in the Fallout universe myself, which is probably one of the main aims of the show, and I know that there were nearly 40,000 concurrent players in mid-April according to Steam probably feeling the same draw.
So what have you been working on improving recently?