Need your opinions / help

[skitzo]

Hey all,

I'm a high school teacher who has just been shunted into the computer science department at my school (grade 11 & 12). For something like the past decade, the students have been working with Visual Basic. I would like to change this. So, I asked around and apparently php MySQL is the way to go.

However, I don't know php - I'm learning right now - but I need some ideas (and a course) for teaching. I think the students would really like to make a game. Can anyone point me in the right direction to learn how to do this? Is there a special editor I need? We don't have php on the network so I rented server space for a year. If this doesn't fly, they have to go back to VB (which I don't want)

Has anyone taken a course and can tell me what they liked and didn't like? What I should keep for grade 12's? Perhaps anything I should cover? The board provides NOTHING!!!!

[coreymanshack]

php is really not hard at all to install on a server... I think you wasted your money paying for one ... but i taught myself how to program in php with the book entitled...

Sams Teach Yourself PHP, Mysql and Apache.

It's a must for anyone learning php. As far as making a game, I'm sure my website http://www.php-gamers.com/ can help your students out by them joining the forums. It's a newly created website and this is just the type of thing I had in mind for a userbase .


There is no special editor you need, I started out using Notepad within the accessories tab in windows. Here is a hello world using php(will not work if php is not installed on your server)

<?php
echo"Hello World";
?>

save the file as .php and it's ready.

Although recently I have switched editors to a program called Notepad++ it is very powerful+lightweight and highlights the code for you where it is easier to use.

The program can be found here..
http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm

I hope to see you around at my forums

.... ADMIN@php-gamers.com



NOTE: Before you jump into php, you first need to know html, wich can be done in one six week period, leaving the rest of the year for php.