We were excited to welcome Steve Isaacs from Epic Games and Bill Marsland from Code Ninjas to our October 2024 CSTA GLA Chapter Meeting to talk to us about using game development to teach coding.
Did you miss our October 2024 Chapter Meeting? Check out the slides and recordings!
- Slides
- Recording: Game Design and Coding with Fortnite and Unreal Engine (for teens) by Steve Isaacs from Epic Games
- Recording: Using Game Development to Teach Coding with ScratchJr and MakeCode Arcade by Bill Marsland from Code Ninjas
At each CSTA GLA chapter meeting, we spotlight someone related to computer science that you and your students might find inspirational. At our October 2024 meeting. the computer scientist spotlight shone on Carol Shaw. Carol is credited as one of the world’s first female professional video game designers. She was typically the only woman in many of her classes at UC Berkeley and was the only woman in her division at Atari where her job title was “Microprocessor Software Engineer”. In addition to developing video games, Shaw also created the Atari calculator and was an assembly language programmer at Tandem Computers. Due to the success of River Raid, which sold more than a million copies and in some versions included Shaw’s name on the cover, she was able to retire in 1990, the year she turned 35.
Resources about Carol Shaw:
- Wikipedia: Carol Shaw
- Atari Women: Carol Shaw
- Stylist: This female gaming pioneer was so successful she retired at 35
- Women in Gaming: Carol Shaw
- Carol Shaw — The First Female Video Game Designer
- Women in tech: The groundbreaking career of video game pioneer Carol Shaw (Avast)
- VC&G Interview: Carol Shaw, Atari’s First Female Video Game Developer
- Carol Shaw: Atari Superstar (Lifewire)
- Tynker: Leveling the Playing Field with Video Game Pioneer Carol Shaw
- Carol Shaw: Pioneering Video Game Designer (Toy Tales)
- Celebrating Women in STEM: Video Game Designer Carol Shaw (UC Berkeley)
- Preserving Carol Shaw’s Trailblazing Video Game Career (National Museum of Play)
- Preserving Carol Shaw's Polo (history of this never published game including design documents)
- Play River Raid
Video: