Digital Leaders @ York St John for Tech Taster Day

On Wednesday 20th November, some Y6 Digital Leaders and all the KS2 Digital Ambassadors from each class visited York St John University for an exciting yet informative Technology Taster Day at the Design Centre.

When we arrived, we headed up to the design studio and met Warren who told us about some new technologies available, such as AR and VR software. VR means virtual reality and AR means augmented reality. Augmented reality is parts of virtual reality as if it was painted on the real world. 

In the morning, we were learning about character designs in games from a tutor called John! To help us create some of our own characters, we played a game where we had to choose a shape, a theme (such as medieval or futuristic) and an animal (like a bird, lizard or mammal). We then were able to start drawing our characters from the elements we had chosen. Some designs were even professionally drawn by John!

After lunch, we headed back upstairs to another studio with around 30 big computers and another tutor who told us about gaming and game design. We even watched Hey Duggie! (We didn’t want to stop watching it!) This was to show us about exciting games with different challenges, and then we got to create our own level of a game in Portal 2. We had a blank room and we needed to add different things like lasers and robots that tried to attack the player to create an obstacle course to complete. After creating our own levels, we could try each others out – some even completed the level!

During this session, we also went on a high-tech VR headset where we could walk around, go up a lift and had to walk the plank from a tall building. It felt scary at the top even though we knew we were just in a normal room! Everyone enjoyed trying out the VR headset and the day as a whole. It was great to learn about the different jobs available in graphic design using technology, and learn about how games work and are created. We all had great fun and have been inspired by our day out!

Report written with help from Mabel and Josh, Class 9, Y5 Digital Ambassadors.

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