This is the Flash Builder source code from the game: BABBY MUST NEEDS SLEEP! Using the Citrus game engine targeting Flash runtimes (Flash player/AIR). If you haven't heard of Citrus before, it is a GPU-accelerated gaming engine (strongly directed at platforming) which sits atop your choice of view renderers, physics engines, and so forth. I chose to use Citrus + Starling + Box2D for my game. The engine is being actively contributed to, is free to use, and holds great promise for integration with tooling in the future.

The Challenge Queuing Theory is included in many introductory Operations Management courses and plays an important part in a company minimizing costs and/or improving customer satisfaction. However, the theory tends to be rather dry and the math can be complex and abstract. As a result, learners often struggle to get a good understanding of Queuing Theory and how it can be applied in real-world contexts. Solution Part 1: QueueSim QueueSim is a web application developed with Flash Builder, Photoshop, and InDesign that runs on desktop computers, iPads, and Android Tablets. QueueSim simulates one or more queues for one or more service stations. The graphics in the animation are meant to roughly represent queuing in an Emergency Room. The animated queue and real-time chart are intended to help students get a visceral understanding of queuing, to really see and feel the effects of queues while allowing them to adjust a wide range of parameters to explore different queuing scenarios and how they might better manage these scenarios for better results. Solution Part 2: K-Blocks Simply asking the learners to go play around with QueueSim would not have been effective in drawing out key takeaways, so a set of structured questions was developed in K-Blocks to guide the exploration in QueueSim. K-Blocks is a full-featured Learner Management System created with Flash Builder, Flash Professional, Illustrator, InDesign, and DreamWeaver. K-Blocks enables instructors to quickly create a structured course with a variety of media and question types. The administrator’s app allows for viewing learner responses in both tabular and graphical display to quickly look for any patterns in responses across the class that could merit further discussion for in-class time. For the Queuing Theory unit, three modules were developed. The first presented some basic multiple choice and short answer questions to explore learner intuitions about queues. The questions presented a histogram of all learner responses so the learners can see how their responses align with other learners in the course. Except for one question on calculating the utilization of a service station, “correct” answers were not offered in order to encourage a feeling of exploration and curiosity. Learners began using QueueSim in conjunction with K-Blocks in the last two modules of the Queuing Theory unit. The questions in these modules presented instructions on what to do in QueueSim using the presets and then asked a question about what was observed. After responding, a list of all other learner responses to the question was displayed. The learner could reply to any of the responses or give a thumbs up to responses they found helpful or interesting. K-Blocks draws learners into a crowd sourced learning environment around QueueSim, resulting in a rich, multi-perspective understanding of queuing. QueueSim URL = http://www.bizsimz.com/queuesim/ K-Blocks URL = http://www.kblocks.com/app/ K-Blocks Sign In Info: K-Blocks ID = 8 K-Blocks Password = adobe User Email = demo1@kblocks.com User Password = demo1 Or click Register and enter your email and password (Student ID is not required)

Ludum Dare (Latin: “to give a game“) is a regular accelerated game development event which takes place over 48 hours. A theme is voted on in the days following up to the event and the chosen theme is revealed at the event start time. Participants basically are going into these 48 hours with nothing prepared since the theme is secret… and all assets and code (aside from external libraries and such) must be created during those 48 hours. Anything that isn’t must be declared beforehand – making for a pretty intense experience for the participants. All source code and authoring files included! Tools used: Adobe Flash Builder 4.6 Adobe Flash Professional CS6 Flixel DAME FL Studio Native Instruments Komplete 7 Adobe Photoshop Extended CS6 Adobe Media Encoder CS6 Adobe Audition CS6

Starling is an ActionScript 3 2D framework developed on top of the Stage3D APIs (available on desktop in Flash Player 11 and Adobe AIR 3). Starling is mainly designed for game development, but could be used for many other use cases. Starling makes it possible to write fast GPU accelerated applications without having to touch the low-level Stage3D APIs. Most Flash developers want to be able to leverage GPU acceleration (through Stage3D) without the need to write such higher-level frameworks and dig into the low-level Stage3D APIs. Starling is completely designed after the Flash Player APIs and abstracts the complexity of Stage3D (Molehill) and allows easy and intuitive programming for everyone. Obviously Starling is for ActionScript 3 developers, especially those involved in 2D game development; of course you will need to have a basic understanding of ActionScript 3. By its design (lightweight, flexible and simple), Starling can be used also be used for other use cases like UI programming. That said, everything is designed to be as intuitive as possible, so any Java™ or .Net™ developer will get the hang of it quickly as well.

As an English composition instructor, I realized that students needed to do something more engaging than writing a boring research paper. So, I broke the final research project into three parts: A descriptive portion, a research portion, and a persuasive portion. For the final part, students had the opportunity to replace the written persuasive aspect with a form of digital media--video, audio, or web. Finally, though students could choose their topic, I stipulated that it had to be about the natural environment. It worked wonderfully!!