There are a wide range of game development programs available for students in the early years, each with admirable advantages. However, the challenge is that as they progress through the elementary and early middle years, Scratch’s block-based programming doesn’t develop with them, leading many students to lose interest and drop out.

The other alternative is moving them on to text-based programming languages such as Unity and Java.  However, at the middle school stage this proves to be too complex and daunting, resulting in more students dropping out of CTE.

My colleague and CTE Coordinator Di Nardo “Dee” Bazile and I created a curriculum review committee that looked at all the programming languages and their pros and cons. STEM Fuse stood out because, for teachers, it takes away a lot of the guessing, lesson plan creation, and curriculum design. It was through STEM Fuse that we started using the free version of Construct 3 programming environment. As the early middle school students start creating block-based games they can also see their game in Javascript text-based code. Students can mix-and-match components of block based and text programing in the same project, even to the level of blending elements of each within a program segment. As they progress through middle school, they slowly transition to using less block-based and more text-based programming. This scaffolds the learning, giving the kids the real-world application and a basic fundamental understanding of computer science by the time they reach high school.

Gaining the confidence of teachers

Another big step was to ensure that teachers with no prior computer scince experience would become more comfortable getting involved. Because our chosen game development software comes with its own GAME:IT curriculum, teachers and students are able to dive in and start creating their own games using various.

As one of our teachers, Sydnie Grizzaffi from Atascocita Middle School, said: “I hadn’t done programming since I graduated in 2005, so when I started teaching, I was worried as I’d really be learning it at the same time as the kids. However, we all worked on it together and learned a lot more. Even teachers who are completely new to programming pick it up within a couple of weeks.

“Every semester we have an increasing number of students elect to take one of our CTE courses and more stay on to expand their learning further.”

By providing a wider variety of classes, having confident teachers, and having an effective curriculum with development software that grows with our students, we now have more than 70 percent of students electing to study CTE.

The world is full of unfulfilled jobs waiting for qualified students. Technology and programming are already embedded in every part of our lives. It’s past time we all work hard to let more students experience the excitement of CTE.