YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – A new program at Choffin Career and Technical Center is preparing students for careers in the virtual reality and game development fields.
The Interactive App and Game Design course is in its second year at the school. The classroom has dozens of computer stations, and a separate lab for creating and testing animation and games.
The course “marries IT into the graphic arts, with an emphasis on the augmented reality and virtual reality settings, as well as game design,” says Mike Saville, director of Choffin.
Students graduate with a wide array of skills that could be used as gateways into whichever niche they choose for specialization – coding, visual arts, movies, commercials, or metaverse development.
There are 14 seniors in the course, which is taught by Donald Hileman.
“I lot of it is augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR),” he says. “They create stuff and test it on a virtual reality headset.”
Metaverse technology allows users to remotely experience a live event.
“It’s the future,” Hileman says. “My students are learning how to create, program, make artwork, sound, all of that. They are meta developers when they leave our building.”
Pictured: Tyler Paris, Aymon Harrison and Justin Clark are taking the Interactive App and Game Design course.