This reading proved to be quite interesting especially considering my recent dabbling in the programming software, Scratch. The study talks about how visual culture of video games influences the digital media work in a graphic design art classroom in the mid-west. The study took place in a high school classroom with mostly male students who admitted to taking the class because of their interest in video games and 3-d animation. I like the setting of the classroom. The study says the the teacher only acts as a guide or coach, rather than a Maya (the program they use for digital 3-D CG creating) expert. He allows the students to work around their own problems and learn the resource first hand. He would only give lectures/demonstrations when there was a common problem, and the solution would be beneficial to the entire group. This allows for the learning to be brought upon by the students themselves and also leaves room for peer mediation.
Some students (78%) also expressed interest in going into the field of video-game design itself which is something I found to be fascination. The connection between playing video games and learning how they are created was a prime motivation for these students to take this class. The students used the information they learn outside of the classroom to help them plan their animations, which they worked on in cooperative groups. I think facilitating groups to explore a new software is good idea because this way they can learn from one another and be assigned to different aspects of the animation.
I think this is relevant to our class for many reasons. One of these being the current project we are working on has not only to do with animation, but with an entirely new program that all of us know absolutely nothing about. I'm excited to explore Scratch in it's entirety. Hopefully I'll be able to make something really really cool. :D
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