Shaq and A-Rod buy into eSports, invest in League of Legends team-   The Video Game Industry is Exploding

We are going into video games design and programming because it is the fastest growing industry in the world.    

We will also soon start our iwn  player competition to help us further understand what makes a great video game. 

Alex Rodriguez, Shaquille O'Neal and Jimmy Rollins are among the latest investors in esports.

NRG eSports, which has one five-player team that competes in League of Legends and another team of five focusing on Counter-Strike, announced Thursday that Rodriguez, O'Neal and Rollins contributed to their latest financing round.

The teams are owned by Andy Miller and Mark Mastrov, who along with O'Neal are minority partners of the Sacramento Kings.

"Valuations of teams are still small," Miller told ESPN.com. "They wanted to get in super early as they are seeing the giant viewership numbers that are dwarfing pro sports right now."

Miller did not disclose the size of the investment. He said he expects to call on Rodriguez, O'Neal and Rollins to assist the team.

"All know what it's like to be super young and play in front of millions of fans every week," Miller said. "We need that guidance and perspective."

Miller also said he won't be shy on calling on his celebrity owners if he needs to sign a player.

Rick Fox, O'Neal's former Los Angeles Lakers teammate, bought an esports team, Echo Fox, in December. Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban is an investor in esports betting startup Unikrn.

Said Miller: "This is pro sports for the millennial generation. We will see other pro sports owners buying in by the end of the year for sure."

O'Neal's employer, Turner, is co-owner with WME/IMG of an esports league called the ELEAGUE, which will broadcast Counter-Strike competitions.

http://www.foxsports.com/buzzer/story/shaq-alex-rodriguez-invest-nrg-esports-league-of-legends-031716

http://espn.go.com/esports/story/_/id/15000505/shaquille-oneal-alex-rodriguez-jimmy-rollins-invest-nrg-esports-teams

Fisher-Price makes programming toy to teach  computer programming to 3 to 6-year-olds


Their new toy, called the caterpillar, teaches coding basics to preschoolers. The company will debut its $50 Think & Learn Code-a-Pillar tonight at Pepcom's Digital Experience, a pre-CES media event, though the toy won't be available to buy until this summer. Instead of getting not-yet-potty-trained kids to code with a screen and keyboard, this plastic caterpillar uses more subtle tactics: it teaches the basics of coding, like sequencing and programming, with segments of the caterpillar's body. Each of these eight segments is labeled with different symbols and colors. Kids put them together, attach them to the caterpillar's smiling, blinky-eyed, motorized head, and press a button to get the whole toy to move.


From my past three years experience I truly believe this will work. I'm actually trying to see if I can start teaching students as young as third-grade how to program, do 3D animation, and also design and programmed their own video games. This includes the basic skills needed, going to advanced skills in computer programming.


And I use the animation and videogame to motivate them to learn how to program and improve their skills each week. If not then their video game will not play they went the way they want it to


http://www.computergraphics.com/


http://www.theverge.com/2016/1/5/10716994/fisher-price-thing-and-learn-code-a-pillar-toy-ces-2016

7th grader - Donovan's Soccer Video Games

He built his own soccer field and lined it, build his own stadium, soccer goals stands etc.   I brought in a third person character controller for him and set the camera up behind him so that we could play the game and see him move and kick goals/

So he went from Autodesk Maya, and then bringing his models into Unity3D, and then putting them in his game adding physics and gravity to his own video game.  He then  was able to publish his game and send it to other students and a bunch of them were playing at last week

We are now going to have our seventh and eighth graders concentrate more on the programming end of the game so they can get a start working on their computer programming skills. This will prepare them for a career in computer science

And my class is now working on in teams and making their own video games. That makes each student has a different part of the game to design and implement

 Seventh- Eight-grade students building their own video game from start to scratch

After teaching my 3D animation and video game design and programming class for two years I decided this year the part of my class the students are really interested in is making their own video games.  While they enjoy making 3D animation and models you can only play so many animations and do things with them.

On the other hand if you make a video game you can play it and send it to others.   And I've spent about 500 hours working on my video game packages. So now my students in the last two weeks are making their own 3D model of a room in Autodesk Maya 2016, extruding it, bring it into Unity3D, adding physics to it, and then making their own video game

And this last week I figured out how they can then publish and send their game to other people, and then also we are going to add a shooter gun and start making her own shooter games this next week.

The images below show the sequence we followed and making our own room and then making a game you could walk and run through in it.

Next week we start writing our own programs to make our shooter perform. So we will be learning computer programming also

Teaching 3D Animation to Middle School Students using Autodesk Maya 2016

My seventh and they could teach students have been doing some amazing work this semester and we have been using the new Autodesk Maya 2016. 

This is the third year for my 3-D animation program and this year I have my laptops plugged in when I don't have to use a cart.   So my students can be working as soon as they had to the classroom. We also have extra memory is some of our laptops.

We are starting to create 3D animations from of our models and some of the students are working on a traffic safety animation for our school district.  This is a great opportunity for the students to be given a project and then using their own vision and design create their own 3D animation that will meet the specifications of what the district needs,

These are the tasks they till be doing when they get a job so it is great practice to start with it now.   They are getting practice with creating and bringing in models, setting up the correct lighting, and then creating a smooth animation to show the correct way to cross the street

Using Oculus Rift Virtual Reality Headset 

I just got the Oculus Rift Headset Installed on my MacBook ProAnd working for my class!  It is absolutely amazing. It virtually lets you walk into the game as if you were inside the game.

The students were blown away and they all lined up to try once or twice.  Now this will further motivate them to learn to computer program so that they can build their own their own unity base video game.

We are using Autodesk Maya to build 3-D models, and then bring them into Unity3D to build video games.  We will be using the C# programming to get started and to develop our skills.

Help me bring 3D Animation and Video Game Design to all students worldwide

Please fund my kickstarter project to bring 3D Animation and Video Game Design and programming to all students and classrooms worldwide.  

Read more at

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2096879612/bring-3d-animation-video-game-design-to-students-w?ref=email