Highlighted XNA Resources on Faculty Connection

[Alfred Thompson [MSFT]]

XNA Lab in a Box
http://www.microsoft.com/education/facultyconnection/articles/articledetails.aspx?cid=1889&c1=en-us&c2=0

Developed in partnership between the Microsoft Innovation Center in the
Netherlands and Avanade Netherlands, this three day set of XNA tutorials and
courseware was designed to provide over 50 faculty and teachers from the
Netherlands with hands on experience of how to teach and build 2d and 3d
games with XNA Game Studio in a lab environment.

XNA Game Studio Workshop
http://www.microsoft.com/education/facultyconnection/articles/articledetails.aspx?cid=1888&c1=en-us&c2=0

This material was created by Kelvin Sung, Associate Professor of Computing
and Software Systems from the University of Washington, Bothell, Washington.
Based on the Microsoft XNA framework, he presents a simple programming
abstraction and guides participants in developing a simple 2D "Block Breaker"
game. Participants will have access to all source code and step-by-step
development guides.

Learn Programming with XNA
http://www.microsoft.com/education/facultyconnection/bz/articles/articledetails.aspx?cid=1855&c1=en-bz&c2=BZ

"Getting Started Making Games with C# and XNA Game Studio" is a programming
course for senior high school or undergraduate students with no prior
programming experience. It is intended to engage students with the craft of
programming by the creation of gameplay using the XNA game framework.

[stevei2071]

I am having difficulty with the Kevin Sung files. I downloaded and extracted
them but then ran into difficulty getting the autorun or any of the files to
open correctly. I seem to be able to access the individual slides as .jpg
images, but not the slide show. Any thoughts?

Also, I am having difficulty extracting the
Learn_Programming_with_XNA_and_C2_.zip file. It indicates that I need a
password for a number of the files.

HELP!!!

Finally, I am teaching a game design and development course to advanced
middle school students. I start the course with gamemaker, but hope to offer
Visual C# and XNA to differentiate instruction for the students that really
excel at programming. I was able to get an Xbox360 for my classroom to
accompany the course. Any thoughts regarding the best way to introduce the
XNA in a simple manner so that the students can feel accomplished initially?
I imagine that modifying existing games would be a good start.

Thanks!
Steve