Nowadays, teaching children artistic tools to create their digital projects, comes with great challenges.
My name is Pablo Ciarlante, I’m a game dev and digital artist. I’ve been teaching children aged 7+ for three years Roblox Studio, Blender, and image editors. Here are some thoughts I’ve developed with my experience.
1 – Children’s attention is very divided.
Many of them don’t want to learn one specific tool, or just coding. Many of them want to learn a wide set of tools to be able to carry out their imagination and their dreams. So as a teacher, learning a wide range of tools is necessary.
2 – Teachers must be able to go with the flow.
Listen to what their students want, adapt. There’s no lesson book for this. Sometimes students will want to learn coding a few lessons, then move to animation, or 3D modelling, or anything else…
3- My goal is always for my students to find enthusiasm in what they do.
Lighten the spark, make them want to create outside of our lessons. For them to find inspiration the most important is to listen, to understand the signs. Sometimes younger students won’t tell you they are bored, but you can always notice. If that happens change the subject, or change the tool, until something clicks!
4 – Sometimes it’s hard for parents to understand the new ways.
Some parents that are more old-schooled struggle to understand the new speeds and psychology of the younger students. Our world’s pace and intensity of stimuli is unprecedented, and requires constant adaption.
5 – Everyone is affected by the revolution of Artificial Intelligence and the always-more-demanding social networks.
Each with their own algorithms and specific needs. And many creators like me don’t face only the demands of one account or project. We many times carry a lot of different projects simultaneously, so our minds and focus must be able to switch rapidly. This is a double-edged sword, very powerful because we aren’t constrained to one expression, one message, we can develop our reach in many ways. But it’s hard not to fall into the stress of the internet today and feel overwhelmed with duties.
6 – Adaptation, pipelines, workflows – this is in my opinion the future of teachers in the A.I. era.
Programming, solving individual tasks will become more and more automatized as the technologies keep learning and becoming better at solving their tasks. So the strength and future of the digital artist and game developer will come from being able to integrate many tools to achieve their goals. From understanding how to import 3D Models downloaded from the internet, fixed in Blender, into Roblox; understanding how to use A.I. in the creation of User Interfaces; being able to share the creations online, reaching audiences; and the list can go on and on.
What are your thoughts?
This article was written entirely by me (Pablo), without any kind of generative A.I.
Image is taken from “Defense Dominance” from one of my Roblox students Balloon_987