Current Course Project

Develop your programming skills by creating video games enhanced with AI!

This program is for children looking to gain a foundation or further develop their programming skills with block-based programming. In this course, students are introduced to basic computer science concepts through the development of their very own vintage SMUP video game. But this is not your average video game, you will learn how to bring this vintage game into the modern era by making it an AI (Artificial Intelligence) Video Game. You will learn about “machine learning” and how to incorporate image and voice recognition as inputs to control your game. The course content is suitable for beginners to experienced game enthusiasts.

For the course, we will be using the mBlock software. mBlock is a STEAM programming software tool designed for programming for kids that supports block-based and text-based programming languages. 

Benefits of mBlock:

• Based on Scratch 3.0, start programming easily.
• Scratch is a programming tool developed by MIT and is credited as the most globally influential programming language for children. Based on Scratch 3.0 and Arduino code, mBlock is versatile and user-friendly enough to offer you whatever Scratch can give. And it’s quite easy to pick up because you can code simply by dragging and dropping blocks.
• Give your creativity an edge with cutting-edge technologies, like AI.
• mBlock integrates Microsoft cognitive services and Google deep learning into one tool. With these features, children can program to add more capabilities to mBlock, like age guessing or using photo recognition to control their games. With mBlock it is easy for children to master the fundamentals of AI.

Skills You Gain

• Basic Game Design  
• Intro to Block Coding
• Customized Pixel Sprite
• Sprite Animation
• Algorithmic thinking
• Machine learning

Technology