PALS Hawaii Project Page
Welcome to my PALS Hawaii Project Page
PALS provides out-of-school learning opportunities for a predominantly Native Hawaiian population of children and youth on the Wai'anae coast of Oahu.
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My #nhisgamedev instagram feed. This is a good snaptop of my class experience.
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I have been part of the PALS Hawaii family since 2013.
Through PALS, I teach an after-school
class on game design with an emphasis on community and place based development.
This was a demo of the monumental project Huli. The board that you see here was created as a demo installation by Pat Ohta and Charles Timtim. For more info on Huli click the link in projects.
Working on 3d terrain in Unity. The game we developed explored the final minutes of someone drowing in quicksand. The game explored the importance of life and the reflection of what matters most in our existence.
Game design contest. We created a narrative game engine for a game contest. The engine was a simple choose your adventure creator in HTML5 CSS and JS. Each contestant had five minutes to use the engine to develop a game using the engine.
We did a exploration of analog vs digital media in a field trip. We reflected on the importance of both mediums and why analogue media still matters. In the picture above my studends purchased what they would call "artifacts" from Ideas Books & Music (formally Jelly's)
Using the Master & Jedi concept from Star Wars, a big part of the programming we do in class is paired with a student mentor. I have found this methodology to be the most effective to teach a new concept. We often find that the mentor learns more than the padawan: "Teach Once Learn Twice."
Thanks to educator and renown Magic The Gathering player, Sean Pottenger, we were able to not only attend the Pro Tour event at Hawaii, but were also able to actually get a behind-the-scenes look at the logistics of running the event & exclusive interviews with Pro Magic players. It's safe to say that this event changed the trajactory of many of my students.
I use a board games in my classes as a reflection tool on what we covered in class, to explore game mechancis, as a comprehension engine and prototyping. Here we are playing Iello's dexterity game, Master Fox.
In 2017 my friend and artist reknown Alika Spahn Naihe, joined my class as an art teacher. This has completely elevated the class. In this picture Alika works with Jack Hobbs on creating prototype assets for our game Huli.
Our design teacher, Alika Spahn Naihe, brings an abundant of knowledge on digital art design. Here he works with our student on the pro's of using Clip Art Studio Pro.