01 Additional design narrative of tool evolution

Introduction

This technical appendix is included to provide more detail of a practical nature to fellow educators in particular to explain and explore the selection of digital tools used within this study.

Narrative of getting starting with tools

Getting started with retro games

Before describing technical tool use, the choice of game genre merits some attention.

In D1 the decision to work with retro games stemmed from a Home Education consultation event which is described in Chapter 1. This possibility to work with games spurred a return to my own love of arcade games. I became an enthusiastic pirate, scouring the web for emulated versions of the arcade games I played in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. I was intrigued and impressed by the community of enthusiasts sharing these archives of games, translated into ROMs, and shared online, and creating software to emulate the old arcade machines and home video game consoles.

Exploratory Phase 1

I only introduced the actually tools to undertake text coding in week 5 due to my own hesitancy in supporting coding. This hesitancy led to exploration of diverse use of tools and processes. I even asked participants to create a mock up of their characters and backgrounds within Scratch as its interface was familiar to some, and more user friendly to others.

I don’t know why it took me so long to adapt a template from the community and use it as a base given that I had taken this approach in my previous study detailing accelerated coding using a starter template of an HTML and css based meme [@chesterman_webmaking_2015].

In week 5 I introduced a minimal template to remix from based on a phaser tutorial. I used this one from Phaser - and adapted it and presented in the Thimble code playground. As of October 2025 it is still available to view https://codepen.io/mrmick/pen/jaXzxw?editors=0010.

While the design narrative of Chapter 5 outlines some of the unintended consequences of leaving this

Summary of motivations and sources of P2 template

Chapter 5 gives a summary of the motivations of the structure of the P2 starting template.

The evolution of the form of the template is taken up in the second technical appendix

On Code Codeplaygrounds

: Referenced in Chapter 5 - section C1

This section examines the features and characteristics of code playgrounds in general and reflects on differences in those used within this study.

On Mozilla, Thimble and Phaser resources

At this stage I would like to express gratitude to the work of the Mozilla Foundation which has helped guide my work. My dissertation work on using Code playgrounds to script HTML pages at post graduate level used Thimble as a key tool [@chesterman_webmaking_2015] ¹. The pedagogy of remixing existing projects was also guided by Mozilla’s work on Webmaking [@mozilla_foundation_webmaker_2014] [^mwp]. When looking to expand this work on scripting HTML and css into the area of programming using JavaScript, the resources of Mozilla devs on a new (at that time) JavaScript game making library Phaser caught my eye. I then also took part in the Mozilla leadership programme using the process of developing resources for this game making course as the orienting activity.

While working with Mozilla always felt like building on shifting sands, I found the community supportive and inspirational. I appreciate their promotion of some of the core features of Code Playgrounds, a tool type previously used as a technical community, within Thimble as a tool marketed to an educational community.

Features of Code Playgrounds

The following features of code playgrounds were relevant for this study and I include them with short descriptions of features and my commentary using the experience of this study as an example.

Side by side preview:

the ability to see the underlying code in one area, and the resulting output in another with near immediate feedback is significant.

• Image and audio file uploading and management: the process of uploading your own images and sounds
• Code linting
• Rewind facility

There are other aspects of Code Playgrounds which, while less relevant to this study, and more patchy in implementation. Key features and motivations are listed here without commentary on impact.

Community feedback:

Using a Code Playground as a code writing tool brought with it the potential to feel a part of a wider community of creative makers. This community spirit was something that both Mozilla via the Webmakers project, and Glitch.com actively sought to foster.

Community support:

Mozilla had forums which allowed users to ask for help, users included specialist mix of educators and web technology enthusiasts. Glitch

Reduced functionality of Code Playgrounds in 2025

The deprecation of Glitch and migration has involved the loss of some functionality. The main one being the live aspect of both the Thimble and Glitch tools. The process of working on a project and having an ongoing live weblink which could be shared with fellow participants, friends and family is significant as a contribution to an online community of enthusiasts publishing games. There are several alternatives available now that this functionality has been lost from the toolset but none as immediate and simple.

A similar process happened in 2025 to the glitch platform. Glitch migration was needed after glitch.com announced it would stop hosting in July 2025.

I undertook a process of downloading files and reuploading them to an online repository. They are now online here: https://jamm-labs.github.io/ggcp/ NEEDS AN FM REPO

This begs a question, where best for facilitators to host code playground projects from 2025 onwards. I have undertaken limited research but have the following options as suggestions.

• Replit: Live hosting not supported
• Codepen: Image uploads not supported.