Teacher: Mrs. Hill
One fun class here at JVA is the Video Game Design class, where students can learn the basics of making video games. In order to learn more about the class, we interviewed Mrs. Hill to hear what she has to say about this fun and interesting class! Thank you for your time, Mrs. Hill.
Tell us a bit about yourself.
I am a native Coloradoan. That fact explains the reason I don’t ski. I am married with two kids and a new puppy! I have a few hobbies. I love to garden – I have quite a few different gardens where I grow strawberries, raspberries, herbs, vegetables and a few flowers. I am a life-long musician. I play several instruments – piano, guitar and harp. I also sing in a large community choir (Alpine Chorale) and in my church choir. Teaching is my second career. I came from the technology industry. I have managed quite a few high tech organizations and am pretty good at all things technical. It’s an exciting and creative field that is never boring because it’s always changing! I left the world of corporate technology to go into teaching. I have never regretted that choice. I love teaching and I particularly love our students and staff at JVA. For my daily mind-set, I try to focus on spiritual things in my life so I do quite a bit of prayer and meditation. Taking walks when it’s warm enough is also part of that. I love to just notice the birds, trees, plants and sunshine.
What will students learn in this class?
Video Game Design class is actually a coding class that focuses on creating scenes and animations which naturally lead to the creation of games. Anyone who creates video games has to know how to code. The course is a combination of learning how to code and expressing creativity. Many professional coders and game developers are also very artistic and often musically talented people.
This course has to work on Chromebooks, so we concentrate on 2-d vs. 3-d game designs and code. Here’s an example of a game a student can create by the end of the course:
https://studio.code.org/projects/gamelab/tFDg7tlbumVH5scEtj0xmpR5-rojpzHGktcZNgT_H6M
What does this class cover throughout the semester?
Video Game Design reinforces many math concepts as students learn how to create shapes and characters on a screen using coordinates for placement. Students learn how to apply colors and add animations and keyboard or mouse controls to their characters on the screen. As the course progresses, students are able to add score keeping to make games “playable.”
What’s your favorite part of the class?
I love seeing the creativity expressed by students. Every student’s created scenes are different, as well as their concepts of different types of games. Many students who are beginners at coding enjoy creating custom games that they can be proud of.
What do you want others to know about the class?
This class is pretty challenging, but I provide tons of help for students to be successful. Learning to code is becoming even more important as we all learn how to deal with AI in our lives. AI is not perfect and students who have some coding skills will have an advantage in the workforce. Video Game Design class is also great for students who would like to explore the graphics and design side of game development.
Thank you again to Mrs. Hill for her time! As the school year progresses, we’re looking forward to seeing how JVA students are able to get inventive and channel their amazing artistic skills in a brand new way through video game coding and animating. Here’s to all the future programmers and creators!
