High-School Game Education

Joseph J. Jolton (left), New Media
Instructor and vGallery Curator,
The Blake School

Developer Profile: The Blake School.

At the Blake School, Unity allows freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors to make their 3D artwork come to live, learn game design concepts, and have creative fun in the process.

Instructor and new media curator Joseph J. Jolton describes the process.

I originally came from an illustration background. I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design with a major in film and a minor in illustration. I've worked as a storyboard and previsualization artist, broadcast promotions producer-writer-director, motion graphics designer, website developer, and Flash designer (I think you can detect a running theme in there somewhere) for television stations, ad agencies, music video production houses, and various other entities before I became a teacher. I have been teaching at Blake now for almost five years.

My work at Blake started out with a grant to produce a "virtual gallery" to showcase student artwork done in traditional media in an interactive way. This was our first foray into the gaming environment, since a team of students and I used the Unreal Engine to create a series of virtual spaces that could show artwork in a venue impossible to construct in real life. This collection of spaces became the vGallery and it was immensely successful. So successful that I was asked to propose and teach a course in new media. The program has grown since it started, and enrollment has been phenomenal.

The Blake School is an independent school running from pre-K through 12th grade. "Independent" means it operates outside of the school district and gets its funding through tuitions, endowments, donations, and grants. Basically it's a private school. It's been around for about 100 years and comprises three campuses in the Twin Cities – one lower school campus (pre-K through 5th grade), a combined lower and middle school (6th through 8th grades) and an upper school campus (9th through 12th grades). I teach at the upper school.

Initial 3D model in SketchUp, by Taylor and Charles.

Same level being played in Unity.

Some of them, if they took a printmaking course, know the basics of Photoshop. Some others come in knowing a little Flash, Final Cut Pro, or iMovie. Almost none of them come in knowing how to use 3D software, game development tools, or even how to mod from existing games. The reality is that most of these kids know little beyond Word, Internet Explorer, AOL, and whatever chat client they prefer. And maybe BitTorrent. So much for the computer generation.

In my computer arts course, we use ComicLife, Photoshop, Gimp, Blender, SketchUp, Flash (which we will changeover to Xtivity when the OS X version comes out), iShell, and of course, Unity.

The course runs one semester, which is about 16 – 18 weeks. Students can take the course again for credit, and those returning students do similar projects as the first-timers, but with the bar raised. This past year was the first time the course spread into two sections, and the enrollment for next year is just as good.

The results? A lot of students going "wow!" A few going, "huh?" A lot of interesting material being generated, and a lot of word-of-mouth around the school about the cool stuff we do. And of course a skill set for creative problem solving, time and resource management, a different way of seeing the world around them, a respect for collaboration, and a hatred of any computer more than three years old.

Running around in a maze, by Eric and Jack.

They learned how to use Photoshop to do sophisticated image manipulation; they learned the basics of interactive design – how to create a user experience. They learned how to design and construct 3D models; how to create and apply textures to them; how to add those models to a 3D environment; bring in elements such as lights, particles, animation, and most importantly, a first-person controller; how to troubleshoot a problem (ask the teacher). But beyond the mechanics of the process, they learned how to experiment – how to poke around the software, take some chances, see what something can do without worrying about the consequences. My greatest criteria for grading was experimentation – the more you experiment, the better your grade, regardless of the outcome. Show me you tried something beyond what we covered in a classroom tutorial, and you'll be doing fine. The fastest way to an "A" in my class is to exceed the limits of your own knowledge and experience – and then own it.

Generally, they enjoyed it. Some of them, I'm sure, were expecting some kind of dabbler's walk in the park and were a bit dismayed that it was actually work. Most of them, however, enjoyed the opportunity to play with new tools and create interactive experiences that began to touch upon the games nearly all of them played on their computers or consoles. I have a lot of repeat students, so I must not have pissed all of them off.

On top of a glass pyramid, by Andrew and Christian.

Ease of use and immediacy of results. Students spent more time fixing their models (mostly having to do with flipped normals) but once in Unity, it made it all worth it because they could, within a single class period, bring in a model, set up some lights, drop in a first-person object, and be running through their scene with time to spare. Some students even explored working with sound and physics, even though much of that was outside the scope of a given assignment – but the cool thing about that was that once other students saw the results, they were motivated to try making it work for themselves in their own projects – and they could, because setting it up was so easy.

The included playgrounds were very useful as well – many kids opened them up and dissected and cannibalized them – just like real grown up game developers! I was so proud!

Crashed car, by Charles and Blake.

Time. An American high schooler's schedule is insanely fragmented, and the sum total amount of hours they could spend on a Unity-based project across a semester is barely that of a professional developer's work-week. I can never expect students to have the kind of hardware or software we use in the classroom, and thus nearly all of our work must take place during class time. Gratifyingly, many students come to my lab during their free periods or even a good half-hour before class time to tweak and work on their projects or seek my advice. But that's exceeding my expectations. The amazing thing is that ANYTHING gets done in the time we have, but when you see some truly cool ideas or experiments come out from a kid who has never before been exposed to these kinds of tools, it may not seem like much to someone in the field, but to themselves and to me, it's mind-blowing.

The only other obstacle was resources – older computers with old graphics cards which had trouble keeping up with newer software, and a lack of computers – students frequently had to double-up, which is like asking two painters to share a canvas. Fortunately, being the squeaky wheel that I am, that situation will change next fall, with the introduction of a new lab of maxed-out Intel iMacs – enough horsepower to last us a few years, and enough computers to keep everyone busy.