Whenever I’m in the classroom and a student sits down to try and code, the first thing that their face shows is hesitation.
They say that they are excited because they will be able to make the game that they always dream of, but at the same time they tell their friends that they don’t really know how to make this game yet. And I believe that that feeling is what stops a lot of people before they even start.
I have heard from a lot of people “You must be really smart to do this”, ”I’m too dumb for this”, “I’m bad at school, I can’t do this” as if in order to build something in tech requires of you to be something or someone “Special”, they think you need years of experience or grow up around it to been think of the idea of creating.
But that is not how this works. A lot of great creations came from people like you and me. They had an idea, and were hungry to learn and start, but did not know how to do it yet, and they did not wait until they knew it all to begin.
The Tools Have Changed (And So Have the Rules)
A couple years ago even trying to make something simple feel like a lot. You had to learn so many things, tools, how to write code, how different things worked, set things up, and so much more before even seeing something on your screen. Nowadays there are a ton of tools that allow us to get there so much faster.
Like Gdevelop, Scratch, Godot, affinity, capcut, and so many others, and some of them give the user a way to learn and create without having to understand everything happening in the platform and not get overwhelmed with many concepts at once. This does not mean that they are not learning.
It just means that they can focus on learning logic, and then figure out why things do not work and how to fix it, while they solve problems, without the burn of having to do it all at once. But now they see their idea coming to life even though they are still learning, and I strongly believe that this is a big difference.
When it Starts to Feel Like My Project
I had a student named Alexander that made me think about this post.
The first week Alexander came to the classroom he was in front of his blank Gdevelop project and even though he did not say he did not want to do what his classmates were thinking to make I could see that he was not connected with it.
It felt like something he was going to build because everyone was going to, looking at the empty project, waiting for instructions to figure out what he was supposed to make.
And I believe this is a normal feeling that everyone has when we first start something new.
A lot of times we tell people “You can do ANYTHING! Everything is possible!" but if you don't know what the tools can do yet, it can be hard to make it mean anything.
Then after I approached him and he told me how he felt: ”I don’t know if I want to do this, I feel like I'm not good at this.” and we talked about the things that he liked, ARGs, hidden secrets, stories, and that’s when I told him “what if instead of creating a platformer you make a game that uses and has all these cool things? “ That’s when his eyes lit up and he said ”I can make a game that connects with the world that I've been writing about!”
Now he had something he wanted to do.
His questions changed too. Instead of asking me what to do next, he started to ask how I could make the camera follow me through a fake wall if I had read all the notes on the floor.
And those are some of my favorite moments when teaching in the classroom. When they go from thinking what am I supposed to do, to how do I make them do this thing?
Helping Students Start
And I believe that is a big part of what we do here at Code on Wheels.
We do not expect someone to walk out after one session knowing every single concept about software or game creation because that is not how it works. Instead, we give them tools that do not feel overwhelming, support them when things do not work, and offer the space to create something they care about.
And to me, that is the most meaningful part.
Because the moment someone sees an idea come to life on their screen, even if it is just a tiny detail, everything changes, they realize all these games, apps, and platforms they use are not just made by distant experts.They can build them too.I do not know where Alexander will take his project from here. Maybe he keeps working on this world, or maybe he jumps to a new software and tries a different idea later on.
But I was able to see that moment where it stopped feeling like work and started feeling like his own creation, and I think that spark is really all anyone needs to begin. You do not have to know everything to begin creating, you just start building, and you figure things out along the way.
