YDACS: Wonderful Comments from CHN Conference and HS Mom's Analysis of XBOX Development Software Announcement

Listmama replies to another homeschool mom's question about YDACS video game design courses....

In a message dated 8/15/2006 9:39:06 AM Pacific Standard Time, xxx@yyy.com writes:

We were just talking about the new Xbox development s/w that will be released at the end of the month. It is going to allow at-home programmers to create and release their own Xbox games via Xbox live. Fun! Anyway, can you tell me about the course your son is enjoying? Dh has been trying to show ds Java, but bought him the most dreadfully dull book and ds can’t get into it.

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We were talking about the xbox thing in our house, too -- but, my DH quickly convinced me that that will be a "down the road" sort of thing for my son. Java's one of the 15 or 20 computer languages my DH is "fluent" in, but he says that when Jason is ready for programming in 3-D, he will probably have him start with Croquet (sp?) (which is on top of Squeak which came from Smalltalk -- all object-oriented programming languages/environments, or so I'm told <g!>).

In the mean time, Jason is starting with the online Video Game Programming Courses from the Youth Digital Arts Cyberschool (ydacs.com), one of the gems I "discovered" at the Calif. Homeschool Network conference in Ontario a few weeks ago.

They recently moved their organization from back east (Boston?) to the San Diego area, but they've been working with kids for a looooong time (museum-based camps, inner city school programs, etc.) and it shows. The online courses are very accessible in terms of content & delivery -- specifically designed to let kids from 3rd grade through high school get up & running quickly. They are also very reasonably priced -- the VGD 101 course that Jason is starting with cost $40 (for 35 days access to the online lessons, the student forums, etc.) and the software needed was only $70 (very steeply discounted for the educational market).

They offer a number of online courses in several areas of the digital arts and have more that are under development. The three basic video game courses include video game design (the 101 class), designing PLATFORM video games (the 102 course -- platforms games are like Mario Bros), and the 103 course which covers creating & animating characters for video games. After that they have the "Kinesis Fusion Academy" program, where kids get to work with code from an actual commercial video game and work with professional game developers.

Along with these video game courses are several programs (digital painting, digital videography & digital music) that could enhance kid's skills for video game development (where the work they produce can be incorporated into their games) or be taken simply as regular digital arts classes. Again, these classes are designed to be very accessible for kids and do not require any particular artitistic or musical skills in order to be able to create their own art or music. I'm thinking of taking the digital painting class myself (and I have absolutely NO drawing or painting ability!).

I met their President, Craig Davis, at the conference and thought he was a really neat guy -- What really impressed me was seeing him relate to the kids (teens & tweens) who had come to hear his presentation about ydacs. He knows what he's doing and is clearly very enthusiastic about what they have to offer, but he's a pretty cool dude who won't turn off the kids like some of the stiff educator types or socially clueless geeks I've encountered as teachers in some computer courses. (of course I use the word "geek" in a completely loving way -- seeing as how I'm married to a megageek myself <g!>) They have worked with kids from the Julian Charter School and (I think) Dehesa. There is a nice streaming video mini-documentary on their website (ydacs.com) about the Julian program and what I really like about that is that it features a GIRL programming a video game . . .

Seeing as how these are online courses you may be wondering why I'm going on and on about a "live" person . . . The main reason is that they plan on hosting conferences (in real life -- not virtual) on video game design as well as their other digital programs in the San Diego area in the near future -- a very cool thing for the kids *if done right* -- and what I saw at the CHN conference caused me to feel like sending my kids to one of their conferences would be money well spent.

Anyway, that's my usual $25 version of my 2 cents on the subject . . .

Lyndy
Da Listmama