North Lake Senior Campus attended the GO3 Expo as an Exhiitor for the first time this year. It was an opportunity for NLSC to launch their new "D
igital Games and Simulations" course for 2010. It endeavours to allow students the opportunity to immerse themselves in the world of
Digial Games and Simulations. Students will be introduced to all aspects of gaming from game design, art, story, character, plot, media, physics of gaming, engineering games consoles, programming and development of the games themselves. There is also an opportunity for students to complete 2 university units, "3D Graphics and Animation" and another first year unit. Students will get credit towards their degree when they attend university.
The main display item at the expo was the blue racing car simulator. This was built for a grand total of $74, much to the surprise of the spectators at the expo. The simulator was built from a series of objects that were being thrown out. Both at the school and on the local verge throw outs. The small cost incurred was the purchase of the game itself, which was Australian V8 Supercars for $5 from Dick Smith's, $6 for a set of Metal Tech screws from Bunnings and some pirmer, thinners and filler for $63 from Super Cheap Auto. Everything else was donated by staff at the campus, friends and a couple of commercial donations from WA Supermarket Carpets and Turners Aeropaint.
The students put a lot of their own time into this project which turned out to be a great success at the expo. The main students involved were Charles, Storm, Karu, David and a whole pile of others. The car was not fully completed by the expo, but was close enough. We still have some work to do, such as painting the flames, but we will do that during term 4.
We had another item on display. That was the arcade game controller supplied by Mike Van Halteran, our D&T teacher. Mike will be running the engineering side of the new course. He brought along the arcade game console which is one of the tasks the students could be undertaking next year as part of the engineering side of things. This also was a great success at the expo, which indicated that NLSC was heading in the right direction.
