Working for Digital Writes

This blog post will discuss my time working for Digital Writes and the skills I have learnt during my time in my role there. Between the months of April and September 2023 I worked as a 'Computer Lab Teaching Assistant', during this time I worked alongside Keith P. Phillips. I assisted in teaching a group of young people the game engine Unity.

I was a part of the Literature Alive project, the aim of this project was to enable young people to get hands on with game design. My experience that I have gained while studying my BTEC in Game Design made me ready to take on this role and allowed me to work 1:1 with many of the students.

Reference - Digital Writes, Literature Alive

Literature Alive allows young people to create a game "aimed at reluctant readers" for independent reading sessions at school. The game is a virtual gamebook with interactive elements and 3D environment segments. The mix of content will help to incentives the reader to stay focused and continue reading. Many of the young people and myself could understand the difficulty of being a reluctant reader allowing discussions about how to best implement features for the target audience.

During the sessions I was able to help these young people learn new skills in Unity, I found all of them to be brilliant students who were all willing to learn and build on ideas. One of my own personal goals when taking on this role was to help the students bring their visions for the project to fruition. Lots of the assistance I gave in the sessions were directly linked to this, many of the students had big ambitions for their parts of the game and I wanted to give my knowledge and attention to help bring these plans to life.

"Toby is a great teacher and knows how to show students of all levels and abilities what to do. He's really nice, approachable and down to earth" - Archie

Reference - Endorsements

I really enjoyed my time working for Digital Writes, my role here teaching was something new to me but I feel I've learnt lots. The comments by the students and their parents were really validating, reading these made me feel really proud of my work. Course leader Keith Phillips also left some feedback on my assistance, this was all wonderful to hear and showed me the skills that are valuable to an employer.

Picture taken at the Museum of Computing

This role has played another big part in preparing me for my university journey and beyond. I am proud of what I've achieved in this role and would love the chance to work with Keith again in the future. All of the students have great potential and will go on to do brilliant things I'm sure!