BY LIANA BAYNE
The Free Lance-Star
Something almost magical happened.
After about an hour of struggling, an army of Pac-Men suddenly raced across 14 computer screens. Their arrival was heralded by joyous shouts.
"It's going through my maze!" the budding software programmers exclaimed.
And just like that, 14 young brains had learned how to make magic in the form of a basic video game.
The 14 students, who ranged from first-graders to eighth-graders, were participating in the new Video Game Maker class at the Riverside Center of
Germanna Community College.
Their instructor, Ben Sherman, is a retired mechanical engineer who got bored and rejoined the workforce as a business and career coordinator for Germanna. He hopes the class will inspire his students to explore engineering, math or science.
"I love to have kids involved with things like this," he said. "We need more engineers and mathematicians."
The four-day camp met every day last week, Monday through Thursday, from 9 a.m. until noon each day. The students moved from learning what a pixel is toward more advanced game-creation functions. On the third day of camp, they learned about making maze-style games like Pac-Man.
Free Lance-Star story:
Rising first- to sixth-graders are learning to design video games through Germanna's Center for Workforce & Community Education. The class, and Legos Engineering classes including Collision Cars, will be offered at the GCC Daniel Center in Culpeper in July and August. The classes are intended to stimulate interest in science, engineering, technology and math (STEM) at an early age
.
Video Game Maker class information: http://www.germanna.edu/workforce/documents/video_gaming.pdf. Legos Engineering: Lego Engineering classes information: http://www.germanna.edu/workforce/documents/lego_engineering.pdf
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