by David Snow
The Paducah Sun
September 29, 2022
Used with permission.
Every weekday morning at 7:22, a group of students shuffle into the Paducah Innovation Hub to begin work on a new class that will help them learn the ins and outs of building video games.
The career pathway is called “Digital Design and Game Development” and the classes in that pathway include digital literacy, introduction to digital game graphics, advanced 3-D game development and advanced game development and publishing.
The classes were begun last year and are led by Andre Meadows and Todd Rushing.
“The laptops that the students use in class are considered gaming laptops,” Meadows said. “They’re not like the school-issued computer.”
In Meadows’ advanced 3-D game development course, the students use a graphics software program called Blender, and Unreal Engine is the 3-D computer graphics game engine they use.
Meadows said what they are learning in Digital Design and Game Development can be used in a wide variety of careers.
“This can help them get into any computer-aided drafting class,” he said. “Also, any kind of engineering-type pathway that you would want to do or even the game industry itself.
“After you take three total courses, they will take the end-of-program test, and they will have completed their pathway.”
In the advanced 3-D game development class on Wednesday, the students were learning how to use Blender, which contains 3-D modeling software. They used that program to build 3-D models.
There are four courses in the Digital Design and Game Development pathway, and students are not required to take all of them if they don’t want to complete the pathway.
The first class held last year had 24 students. This year, only six of those stayed on for Meadows’ class.
“Next year, we’re going to be looking at putting some of our content out there on Google PlayStore and places like that,” Meadows said.
Senior Jacob Rudolph said he was drawn to the pathway by his interest in video games.
“I’ve always been interested in video games,” he said. “So, I thought it would be cool to try to make them.
“What I enjoy is that you can make what you want and make it come to life and play it.”
Rushing’s 23 introductory class members were in the halls of the Paducah Innovation Hub with the virtual reality headsets, learning how to design a tornado, the Paducah Tilghman High School mascot, using a program called Tilt Brush.
“It’s a really interesting program that you can draw, paint or design different backgrounds or different environments,” Rushing said.
Rushing is a teacher at Paducah Middle School. The eighth-graders in his computer classes at that school have a nine-week rotation where they get a feel for what the Paducah Innovation Hub offers when they come to the high school next year. That helps the digital design and virtual reality courses gain students year to year.
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