What's included
Class Experience
In this course, we will learn how to program with JavaScript from the very basics to creating interactive games. Each week's lesson will include videos explaining the concepts in-depth and working through examples of the code. Weekly lessons will cover different topics that build on one another to reinforce learned concepts while continuously introducing new methods. Each week's lesson will have a video overview of the topic we are going to cover, text book readings to thoroughly explain the concepts, activities to accomplish, and a quiz at the end of the week to ensure content mastery. We will cover the basics of programming in JavaScript, learn about variables, arrays, objects, and conditional statements. Along the way, we'll study interactive programming by making a Hangman game, Finding Buried Treasure, and the creating the game SNAKE from scratch using vanilla JavaScript. =) Because this is a flex class, students will get detailed videos each day that cover the topic of the week. Also, there will be reading from a textbook that give context and specific examples. The homework will come from the text book and students will post their code to the classroom. Students will have the opportunity to review and interact with each other's code. Their projects will feature STRETCH goals that allow for personalization and independent growth. These personalized projects will be shared among one another for inspiration and collaboration purposes. Students will be able to look at how the homework was solved, and will be provided with video feedback on their code. Feedback will be provided so learners can work on improving the fundamentals of coding as we work through the course and build the skills need to learn programming. ***JavaScript for Beginners - FLEX Part 1 of 3 should be completed first.*** Topics to be covered in this FLEX course: WEEK 7 - HANGMAN GAME Interacting with a Player - Creating a Prompt, Using Confirm to Ask Questions, Using Alerts to Give Information, Why Use Alerts? Designing Your Game - Pseudocode, Tracking the State, Designing the Game Loop Coding Your Game - Choosing a Random Word, Creating the Answer Array, Coding the Game Loop, Ending the Game PROJECTS - More Words, Capital Letters, Limiting Guesses, Fixing a Bug WEEK 8 - FUNCTIONS Anatomy of a Function Creating a Simple Function Calling a Function Passing Arguments - Printing Cat Faces, Passing Multiple Arguments Returning Values from Functions Using Function Calls as Values Using Functions to Simplify Code - Pick a Random Word, Random Insult Generator, Making Insult Generator into a Function Leaving the Function Early with Return Using return Multiple Times Instead of if... else Statements PROJECTS - Doing Arithmetic with Functions, Are These Arrays the Same?, Hangman Using Functions WEEK 9 - DOM & JQUERY Selecting DOM Elements - Using id to Identify Elements, Selecting an Element, Replacing the Heading Text Using the DOM Using jQuery to Work with the DOM Tree - Loading jQuery on Your HTML Page, Replacing the Heading Using jQuery Creating New Elements with jQuery Animating Elements with jQuery Chaining jQuery Animations PROJECTS - Listing Your Friends with jQuery, Making a Heading Flash, Delaying Animations, Using fadeTo WEEK 10 - INTERACTIVE PROGRAMMING Delaying Code with setTimeout Canceling a Timeout Calling Code Multiple Times with setInterval Responding to User Actions - Responding to Clicks, mousemove Event PROJECTS - Follow the Clicks, Create Your Own Animation, Cancel an Animation with a Click, "Click the Header" Game WEEK 11 - FINDING BURIED TREASURE GAME Designing the Game Creating the Web Page with HTML Picking a Random Treasure Location - Picking Random Numbers, Setting the Treasure Coordinates The Click Handler - Counting Clicks, Calculating the Distance from Click to Treasure, Using Pythagorean Theorem, Telling the Player How Close, Checking if the Player Won Putting It All Together PROJECTS - Increasing the Playing Area, Adding More Messages, Adding a Click Limit, Displaying the Number of Remaining Clicks WEEK 12 - OBJECT ORIENTED PROGRAMMING A Simple Object Adding Methods to Objects - Using the `this` Keyword, Sharing a Method Between Multiple Objects Creating Objects Using Constructors - Anatomy of the Constructor, Creating a Car Constructor Drawing the Cars Testing the drawCar Function Customizing Objects with Prototypes - Adding a draw Method to the Car Prototype, Adding a moveRight Method, Adding the Left/Up/Down Move Methods PROJECTS - Drawing in the Car Constructor, Adding a speed Property, Racing Cars
Learning Goals
By the end of this course, students will have learned the basics of programming in JavaScript. They'll be able to create programs that take user input and process it. Additionally, students will learn how to store and manipulate data in various programs that respond to dynamic inputs. Finally, students will have a good idea of how to program in JavaScript with an emphasis on game development.
Other Details
External Resources
In addition to the Outschool classroom, this class uses:
Sources
"JavaScript for Kids: A Playful Introduction to Programming" by Nick Morgan https://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Kids-Playful-Introduction-Programming/dp/1593274084
Teacher expertise and credentials
Howdy! My name is Chris and I personally believe they should be teaching coding languages in our classrooms. The courses I teach focus on interactivity and building on programming fundamentals. It's so important to me that students get the opportunity to create something unique during our time together. My classes will always endeavor to have a sense of humor and while producing applications that lead to greater understanding of not only the computer language, but also the actions we take while playing games. This approach means students are not only entertained, but really remember the underlying aspects of the lesson, and most importantly, are able to apply them to new challenges.
Reviews
Live Group Class
$17
weekly or $99 for 6 weeks6 weeks
Completed by 2 learners
No live video meetings
Ages: 10-15