Designing a video game starts for Portsmouth students with a small, round robot named Ozobot.
Rising 5th, 6th and 7th graders from around the city use Ozobot to practice their coding skills. Later, they’ll use that knowledge to create a game.
“It has censors underneath the Ozobot that picks up color and it follows lines and there are certain types of color codes the Ozobot is programmed for,” said Neil Warren, a rising 7th grader at Churchland Middle. “When Ozobot runs over certain colors, like blue green blue, it turbos.”
Students use special markers to fill in those special color codes on a laminated maze, watching Ozobot speed up, stop or ‘tornado’ – stay in one place and spin.
The 8-day camp is one of several offered through Starbase Victory, a nonprofit that partners with Portsmouth public schools. There are programs during the school year and summer breaks and focus on science, technology, engineering and math topics.\
“Each of the camps are designed around different themes,” said Richard Neefe, who runs the Starbase program for Portsmouth schools.
The camps focus on skills that students can continue to build and ultimately use in a career, Neefe said.
Starbase purposefully leans into fields that are in need of trained professionals, like cybersecurity and manufacturing.
“They're pretty advanced,” Neefe said of the concepts students learn at Starbase camps. “And again, we always kind of have that career piece in mind.”
This summer, kids could attend any of six different camp programs. In addition to video game design and coding, students could learn about robotics and animals at the Virginia Zoo or could learn to work with drones and end their camp session by launching a rocket.
Layla Kuvala and Kayla Swann, best friends going into 5th grade at Hodges Manor Elementary, chose the coding camp together.
On one of the first days of the session, they’re still unsure if it’s what they want to do when they grow up.
Kayla is leaning toward fashion design and Layla is still weighing her options. They both agree designing a game is a fun hobby.
“I don't know what I want to be, but with gaming,I feel like I would just make games for fun at home,” Layla said.
