For three weeks this summer, Advantage Technology participated in the BridgeValley CTC STEAM Academy located in the Toyota Hall building of the South Charleston campus. This week-long day camp aims to teach Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Math concepts to rising 5th – 8th graders from all around West Virginia. Advantage Technology has instructed the game-design class for the past three years, and hopefully many more to come!
The game-design class is based upon Construct 2 by SCIRRA. Construct 2 is a free program built for 2D game creation and appeals to beginners with its user-friendly drag-and-drop functionality. This program is great for teaching programming fundamentals like conditional logic, instance variables and object orientation.
Game creation gives students a project-based introduction to programming as well as allowing them to be artistically expressive, and so most students are completely engaged throughout the entire week. Most students chose to make a 2D platformer similar to Super Mario where they created a player, collectables, enemies and many levels. Nearing the end of the week, most kids begin sharing their games and letting others play to try and beat them.
Advantage Technology enjoys giving back to our community and take pride in teaching and influencing our youth.
