Magnet School Will Focus on Video Games

The Miami-Dade County district is starting a high school that will focus on teaching students to design and program video games.

The magnet program, called iTech Academy, will be housed at Miami Springs High School.

"iTech Academy offers a sequence of courses that provides coherent and rigorous content aligned with challenging academic standards and relevant technical knowledge and skills needed to prepare for further education and careers such as a Game/Simulation Designer, Game Programmer, and Game Software Developer," a brochure for the new program states.

The curriculum will cover the major aspects in game design.

"As a concept and storyboard artist you will develop ideas that will become your game," the brochure says. "In addition, you will work with 3DS Max to produce objects and characters for your game as a character artist. As a level designer you will create the environment your player will interact in, and as a texture artist you will add convincing skins to your objects, characters and environment. Moreover, you will incorporate sound effects and produce the music for your game. Finally, no game can go untested; as a tester you will learn to find solutions to problems in your game."

To be eligible for the program, students must have at least a 2.5 grade point average in their core academic subjects, the district says.