First day of Intro. to Gaming Concepts I

Today was the first day of Introduction to Gaming Concepts I. I had the students sign their consent forms and fill out the survey. I also tried to give them a taste of what Globaloria is all about by showing them games made by Globaloria Alumni, showing Alumni's wiki pages, and more. I feel this is the start of a really good semester!

August Globaloria Training

I am currently sitting here learning new techniques to use this coming semester for Introduction to Gaming Concepts I. The curriculum has totally been redone, and it is exponentially better than before. What excites me most is actually the semester 2 curriculum topics. There are many ancillary topics that my students will be able to learn if they pertain to their game projects. I have never had a student say "How do I create an array?", but I have often heard "How do I keep score?". This drastic change to the wiki curriculum will make learning easier because my students don't know if they need an array. If they knew if they needed it, they would already know what it was and what it does. But, knowing what functionality that they want in their game will then answer the question of what flash skills they need to learn to faciliate that skill.

It's Official!

It is official, today I was offered a full-time Instructor position at Marshall Community and Technical College. I accepted of course! This has been a goal I have been working towards for several years. The workload doesn't change much, but it does give me peace of mind to know that I have a stable job.

Almost over!

The last spring and summer semesters have been an experience to say the least.
On the academic front, I taught 15 hours of classes at Marshall Community and Technical College while concurrently taking 18 hours towards my undergraduate. This summer, I took 12 hours to finish my undergraduate degree while also teaching one class and becoming the IT 101 Coordinator at MCTC which requires me to create the syllabus template that all faculty members who teach IT 101 must go by, as well as planning and coordinating training for our returning IT 101 faculty. I also attended the first day of the July 2008 training for Globaloria while Dr. Randall Jones covered my summer IT 101 class for me.

On the personal business side, my girlfriend and I shot a wedding in Jamaica, shot a senior portraits session, took pictures of some handmade Amish furniture from which we made two brochures, shot a sweet 16 birthday party, then a family portrait session of the family of sweet 16's family, and finally, shot a local wedding.
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So, now, with August 15th, the last day of my summer classes, looming, I am reflecting on those previous hectic months, proud that I made it through them. I know there will be challenges this fall semester, but I plan to embrace them. This fall I am teaching 5 classes, all with different preps. The preparation that goes into these classes can be intense, but I like having a variety of classes. The saying "use it or lose it" comes to mind, and if I am constantly keeping my skills varied, then at the same time, I am keeping them up-to-date. If life didn't have challenges, I don't know if there would be much of a reason to get out of bed.