Lesson 7: Event-Driven Programming

Understand the concept of event-driven programming: Help students understand the basic principles of event-driven programming and its importance in software development.
Learn how to use events in visual programming: Students will be able to set up event responses in visual programming tools, allowing programs to react to events like clicks and keyboard input.
Cultivate interactive design thinking: By implementing simple interactive projects, students will enhance their understanding of user input and program responses.

Introducing the Topic: Ask students: “When you click a button, how does the computer know what you clicked?” This will guide students to think about how computers respond to user actions.
Preliminary Introduction: Explain how “event-driven programming” allows a program to react to events (such as clicks, touches, or keyboard input).

Basic Concepts of Event-Driven Programming (5 minutes)
- Definition of an Event: Introduce that an event is an action triggered by the user’s interaction with the program, such as a mouse click or a key press.
- Event Response Mechanism: Use a simple example to illustrate how a program responds with preset instructions when an event occurs, creating an interaction between the user and the program.
Basic Methods of Event Handling (10 minutes)
- Demonstrating Event Modules: Show the event modules in a visual programming tool (such as “when space key pressed” or “when this sprite clicked”).
- Task Practice: Have students set up events in visual programming. For example, when the user clicks a character, it performs an action like jumping or rotating.
Comprehensive Application: Creating an Interactive Project (10 minutes)
- Project Description: Guide students to design a simple interactive project, such as a “Whack-a-Mole” game, where a character disappears and a score is kept when it is clicked.
- Team Collaboration: Students work in groups to complete the project, reinforcing their understanding of the event response mechanism and exercising their collaboration and creative design skills.

Work Display: Each group presents their interactive project, sharing the creativity and implementation methods of their project.
Discussion and Feedback: Other students can offer suggestions or ask questions to help the presenting group improve their design.

Review of Key Points: Summarize the concept of event-driven programming and its application scenarios.
Q&A Session: Answer students’ questions and encourage them to continue trying to design different event responses after class.

Visual Programming Platform: Such as Scratch, used to demonstrate the basic operations of event-driven programming.
Sample Projects: Prepare some simple interactive mini-games to help students understand the effects of event-driven programming.

Hands-on Task: Have students design a mini-game or interactive animation using at least two different event responses.
Thinking Task: Encourage students to think about other common “events” and their responses in daily life (such as elevator buttons, doorbells, etc.) and share them in the next class.