Game and Interactive Media
Game and Interactive Media is a major offered at Conway High where students combine programming skills and animation techniques to create video games and interactive media. Students who participate in this major learn about visual communication arts and interactive digital technologies while developing skills in areas such as animation, simulation, programming, web design, and editing. This major prepares students for careers in fields such as the video game and entertainment industries.
Required Courses
Game Design and Development
Game Design and Development provides students with the opportunity to design and develop fully functional video games with product design documentation. This course emphasizes game control and logic, design tools, and the physics of games using computer programming. This is a required course. This is a required course for this major.
Foundations in Animation
Foundations of Animation prepares students to use artistic and technological foundations to create animations. The basic principles of digital animation are reviewed, including character development and story conception through production. Students learn the technical language used in the animation industry and basic animation methods. They will also learn techniques about various ways to plan, create, and prepare for animation in pre-production, production and post-production. This course prepares students for the Adobe Certified Associate for Flash/Animate Creative Cloud (CC) certification exam. This is a required course. This is a required course for this major.
Preferred 3rd Course
Fundamentals of Web Page Design and Development
Fundamentals of Web Page Design will guide students in the development of websites in a project-based, problem-solving environment. Students will learn the industry standard languages, HTML and CSS, which are used in every website on the web today. Students will learn how to create a portfolio of content-rich, well-styled websites. Successful completion of this course will prepare students for industry certification.
Preferred 4rd Course
Must Choose One
Accounting I
Accounting 1 introduces accounting for business and personal use, and serves as a foundation for business ownership opportunities, employment, and post-secondary studies in all areas of business. Topics covered include the accounting cycle, cash control, payroll, financial statements, and the use of automated accounting and electronic spreadsheet software.
Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship is designed to provide students with the knowledge and skills needed to develop an effective business plan for small business ownership. An important part of the course will be the incorporation of economics, ethics, legal aspects, logistics, research, staffing, strategies for financing, and technology.
PLTW Computer Science Essentials
Computer Science Essentials exposes students to a diverse set of computational thinking concepts, fundamentals, and tools, allowing them to gain understanding and build confidence. Students use visual, block-based programming and seamlessly transition to text-based programming with languages such as Python® to create apps and develop websites, and learn how to make computers work together to put their design into practice. They apply computational thinking practices, build their vocabulary, and collaborate just as computing professionals do to create products that address topics and problems important to them.
PLTW Computer Science Principles
Using Python® as a primary tool and incorporating multiple platforms and languages for computation, this course aims to develop computational thinking, generate excitement about career paths that utilize computing, and introduce professional tools that foster creativity and collaboration. While this course can be a student’s first in computer science, students without prior computing experience are encouraged to start with Computer Science Essentials. Computer Science Principles helps students develop programming expertise and explore the workings of the Internet. Projects and problems include app development, visualization of data, cybersecurity, and simulation. PLTW is recognized by the College Board as an endorsed provider of curriculum and professional development for AP® Computer Science Principles (AP CSP). This endorsement affirms that all components of PLTW CSP’s offerings are aligned to the AP Curriculum Framework standards and the AP CSP assessment.
PLTW Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity introduces the tools and concepts of cybersecurity and encourages students to create solutions that allow people to share computing resources while protecting privacy. Nationally, computational resources are vulnerable and frequently attacked; in Cybersecurity, students solve problems by understanding and closing these vulnerabilities. This course raises students’ knowledge of and commitment to ethical computing behavior. It also aims to develop students’ skills as consumers, friends, citizens, and employees who can effectively contribute to communities with a dependable cyber-infrastructure that moves and processes information safely.