The University of Denver’s computer science department is bringing video-game development to area high schools with help from a $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation.
The funds, distributed over three years beginning this summer, will support a summer boot camp for teachers and students from low-income areas in the Denver area. The teachers will then bring the skills back to their classroom in the fall.
Anneliese Andrews, chair of DU’s computer science department, talked about the program in an interview Friday at Mile High TiEcon 2006, an annual event hosted by TiE-Rockies, an entrepreneurial group. The event focused on Colorado’s video-gaming community, wireless technology and homeland security.
Allen Ellison, managing partner for EffectiveUI, a Denver-based company focused on video simulations for government agencies, sees more young people learning through games.
“It’s an excellent idea, especially for math,” he said. “Visualization is a very important component for math. Playing incorporates more of the senses.”
As part of the DU boot camps, teachers from the math, computer science and art departments at Montbello, Martin Luther King Jr. and three other high schools will spend two weeks learning how to create two-dimensional video games like Pac-Man.
The teachers will be trained separately ahead of time from the students but will be around to help in the student boot camp.
“We’re having them use the development of games as a vehicle of learning. Ninth- and 10th-graders grew up on games which have roots in math and science,” said DU’s Andrews. “The purpose is to attract under represented minorities into math and science disciplines in college.”
DU has previously run a video- game-development boot camp but has never incorporated teachers into the program.
The student boot camps will be divided into groups of boys and girls, as girls are sometimes intimidated by boys in math and science classes, said Rahmat Shoureshi, dean of DU’s school of engineering.
All efforts to motivate students around math and science are positive, say students and video-gaming professionals.
“You could show simulations about how functions or theories work,” said Phil Niemi, a senior at Smoky Hill High School in Aurora. “In physics, a (gaming) program could be used and applied.”
Niemi has already taken video- game-development courses at his high school. He and a half-dozen other students from the school’s video- gaming program were at TiEcon 2006.
Carlos Lara, a senior majoring in computer science at DU, said he hopes the NSF grant will help level the playing field for many students.
As a counselor for last year’s game camp, he noticed that students from more affluent areas tended to have easier access to computers and came to the class with more technical skills than high-schoolers from other areas.
Also at Mile High TiEcon:
Sun Microsystems is getting into the gaming industry and working on a server to sell to makers of online video games, said Chris Melissinos, Sun’s director of gaming. It’s called Project Dark Star.
“It’s designed from a video-game developer’s point of view,” he said. “We looked at developers’ needs and applied it to the enterprise level.”
A single Dark Star blade server can host several games on different gaming platforms, Melissinos said. Project Dark Star is in development, with an unveiling expected at a game developer’s conference next year.
Colorado could become a hotbed for video-game developers, according to members of a panel discussing whether the state has “what it takes to be a player in the video- gaming and business-simulation industry.”
“We have to have systems in place for high-growth, emerging companies. We see major steps in higher education,” said Brian Vogt, executive director of the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade. “Gaming is a natural for Colorado; we must find ways to accelerate it.”
Staff writer Kimberly S. Johnson can be reached at 303-954-1088 or kjohnson@denverpost.com.
