List of Contributions

Wesley Jeffries, k12teacher

CTE,

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RE: Late Wednesday Discussion - Next year purchases

Posted By Wesley Jeffries 05-13-2024 11:13
Found In Egroup: Video Game Design/Developers \ view thread
My computer lab is getting a long overdue remodel this summer. My computers are being replaced (they're from 2016/17), new tables, but most importantly, new flooring/paint. This means I have to completely empty the room and get everything off of the walls before I leave for summer. ------------------------------ ...

RE: Wednesday: Discussion Finals

Posted By Wesley Jeffries 04-12-2024 17:30
Found In Egroup: Video Game Design/Developers \ view thread
Year 1: make a board/card game based on a historical event. Students are in teams of 3 and have to make a game that informs the player about the event through play. We have to assume the player has no knowledge of the event so quiz-type games are not allowed. They will also be writing a rules doc, making ...

RE: POST GDC Introductions

Posted By Wesley Jeffries 04-06-2024 12:40
Found In Egroup: Video Game Design/Developers \ view thread
Hello everyone, Wes Jeffries, I have been teaching for 17 years, and have been teaching game design for 9. I have a 3 course pathway: Game Design Principles: board/card game mechanics and prototyping, traditional pencil/paper art, and some 3D art. Digital Game Design: video game prototyping in ...

RE: Wednesday Check in - Recruitment/Marketing

Posted By Wesley Jeffries 03-14-2024 14:23
Found In Egroup: Video Game Design/Developers \ view thread
My district has been working overtime to promote CTE to our middle schoolers and admin with mixed results. We visited the middle schools a few times and had an open house last month to reinforce the middle school visits. I find my program is in this weird limbo because the students that would excel in ...

RE: Who is going to GDC?

Posted By Wesley Jeffries 03-14-2024 14:07
Found In Egroup: Video Game Design/Developers \ view thread
I will be there Sunday - Friday. ------------------------------ Wesley Jeffries k12teacher Riverside CA ------------------------------

RE: Game Design Documents (GDDs)

Posted By Wesley Jeffries 03-14-2024 14:06
Found In Egroup: Video Game Design/Developers \ view thread
I have my 2nd and 3rd year students write design docs. For my 2nd years, in the past I have used a template from Ernest Adam's book Fundamentals of Game Design. My 3rd years competed in SkillsUSA this year and they were provided a very long template and were expected to condense it to 1-page (eliminates ...

RE: Wednesday Discussion - Brag on your students!

Posted By Wesley Jeffries 02-15-2024 10:29
Found In Egroup: Video Game Design/Developers \ view thread
My students are competing in SkillsUSA for the first time this year and I had teams of students from my advanced class submit video game projects. One of my teams came in 1st in the regional conference yesterday (all of SoCal minus LA which is its own region). That team and another that qualified will ...

RE: Game Developers Conference on 3/22

Posted By Wesley Jeffries 02-15-2024 10:24
Found In Egroup: Video Game Design/Developers \ view thread
That is super awesome for your students Owen, congrats! I will be there all week. Not sure what talks to go to yet, but Nate Walker had a great idea of assigning his students to look through the schedule and find talks that they would want to go to to give him suggestions/ideas. I made my students do ...

RE: Late Wednesday Discussion - Game Jams

Posted By Wesley Jeffries 02-15-2024 10:19
Found In Egroup: Video Game Design/Developers \ view thread
I attempted Global Game Jam Next back in 2018ish and it was during summer so none of the students wanted to participate. However, prior to covid I had run several jams (analog and digital) either at my school site or at a local university with their game design students. All it took was someone at the ...

RE: Super Late Wednesday (Thursday) Check in - Difficulty

Posted By Wesley Jeffries 01-18-2024 17:35
Found In Egroup: Video Game Design/Developers \ view thread
My first year course is all analog games but does require a fair amount of writing at times (design docs, rules docs, etc.). A typical week is a 2-3 difficulty with spikes of 6-7 when big projects are due. 2nd year is programming in Unity and is probably a 4-5 difficulty most days when students are ...

RE: Early Wednesday Check in - Goals

Posted By Wesley Jeffries 01-11-2024 12:18
Found In Egroup: Video Game Design/Developers \ view thread
So far it has been an overall positive experience. We took 9 of our officers to the Fall Leadership Conference in September in Los Angeles (Downey), and the pricing for everything has been very reasonable. As for competition, I thought students could submit any game so I had them working in pairs on ...

RE: Early Wednesday Check in - Goals

Posted By Wesley Jeffries 01-11-2024 11:07
Found In Egroup: Video Game Design/Developers \ view thread
I have two main goals for this semester: Get my intro board game class switched from a G elective to a F fine art in the UCOP system. I have been doing a lot with SkillsUSA this year and want to make my chapter a Level 2 Chapter of Excellence so we have momentum going into next school year. -- ...

Wednesday Discussion - Letters of Recommendation

Posted By Wesley Jeffries 11-29-2023 10:12
Found In Egroup: Video Game Design/Developers \ view thread
UC/CSU applications are due tomorrow, and if your students are anything like mine, they waited until the last minute to ask for letters of recommendation. So, what are your practices on writing letters of rec? do you use a template? do you ever feel "good" about the letters of rec? I tell the ...

RE: Wednesday Check in - Cross Curricular projects

Posted By Wesley Jeffries 10-26-2023 10:50
Found In Egroup: Video Game Design/Developers \ view thread
In my board game class, the first semester is final is making a game based on the book they are reading in English class. Students are grouped by grade/teacher as much as possible. This project gets okay results. The second semester final is making a game based on a historical event. The emphasis is ...

RE: Wednesday Discussion - Wins

Posted By Wesley Jeffries 09-20-2023 17:54
Found In Egroup: Video Game Design/Developers \ view thread
Today I am doing parent teacher conferences (we have a non-student day for this in lieu of "back to school night"; I recommend it). One very odd bit of information that can be construed as a win so far this year is multiple students are doing well in my Digital Game Design class, but terribly in all ...

RE: Wednesday Check in - Challenges

Posted By Wesley Jeffries 08-31-2023 17:14
Found In Egroup: Video Game Design/Developers \ view thread
One of my major obstacles is our course selection process for students. The paperwork listing the classes is almost always incorrect and CTE courses feel like an afterthought even though many of the CTE courses on my campus offer college credit and should be taken by our honors/AP kids. I'm on year 5+ ...

RE: Wednesday Check in - Resources

Posted By Wesley Jeffries 08-24-2023 15:07
Found In Egroup: Video Game Design/Developers \ view thread
Yes sir. ------------------------------ Wesley Jeffries k12teacher Riverside CA ------------------------------

RE: Wednesday Check in - Resources

Posted By Wesley Jeffries 08-24-2023 14:53
Found In Egroup: Video Game Design/Developers \ view thread
I use Jeremy Gibson-Bond's textbook for a big chunk of the prototyping/tutorial portion of my year 2 class. I like the book because it is highly detailed, and since it is a book and not a website, students cannot simply copy/paste the code examples. It forces the students to manually type in the code ...

RE: Wednesday Check in - So what classes you teaching?

Posted By Wesley Jeffries 08-17-2023 15:29
Found In Egroup: Video Game Design/Developers \ view thread
I would like to note that when this proposal was written, we were frankensteining together a semester Game Design class that was on the books (IIRC using visual basic) and a semester Photoshop class to create a 1-year course. Since then, all the Photoshop stuff is out, more traditional drawing with pencil ...

RE: Wednesday Check in - So what classes you teaching?

Posted By Wesley Jeffries 08-17-2023 11:32
Found In Egroup: Video Game Design/Developers \ view thread
Brian, are your classes only a semester (5 credits), or are students on a block schedule that gets them a year of content each semester (10 credits per class)? This year I am teaching 1 section of Game Design Principles, 2 of Digital Game Design, and 1 of my capstone course Video Game Development. ...