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Are Kids Who Make Their Own Video Games Better Prepared For The Digital Future? - Forbes
Are Kids Who Make Their Own Video
Games Better Prepared For The Digital
Future?
[1]
"Stemville" a game created by STEM challenge winner, Nicolas Badila (Middle
School).
It is easier than you might think for kids to make their own video games.
Gamestar Mechanic [2] is a great web based place for younger children to start.
Kodu [3], Gamemaker [4], and Scratch [5] all offer simple interfaces for more
experienced kids.
When kids design their own video games, they are engaged in “learning-bymaking.” Project based learning is a constructive experience. It is active rather
than passive. It involves creation rather than consumption.
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[6] It Only Takes About 42 Minutes To
Learn Algebra With Video Games [7]
[8] How Game-Based Learning Can
Save the Humanities [9]
Coding, video game making, and interactive expression will be central to
education’s future–not only because these activities encourage the STEM
(science, technology, engineering, math) skills involved in digital content
creation, but also because game creation nurtures the kind of humanistic
personal skills that we expect from successful contributors to society.
One 2011 study showed significantly increased deep learning and intrinsic
motivation when kids made their own games. Another 2009 study showed that
when kids created their own game based quiz questions, they demonstrated
increased content retention and better performance on standardized tests. A
2010 study “found evidence to indicate that the game-authoring activity
stimulated higher order thinking skills.“
Some kids are already making their own games. The Joan Ganz Cooney Center
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Are Kids Who Make Their Own Video Games Better Prepared For The Digital Future? - Forbes
[10] and E-Line Media [11] just announced the 2013 winners of the National
STEM Video Game Challenge [12]. Sixteen middle and high school students (out
of 4000 entries) took the top honors. “The competition aims to motivate
interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) among students
in grades 5-12 by tapping into their enthusiasm for playing and making video
games.” The winners (listed at the end of this article) receive fully loaded AMDpowered laptop computers.
Inspired by President Obama’s “Educate to Innovate Campaign,” [13] the
National STEM Video Game Challenge [14] selected twenty-eight youth as
winners in 2012 and three of those winners participated in the 2013 White
House Science Fair [15] in April. “Youth are natural inventors. They are
increasingly shaping their own education by making things,” said Michael H.
Levine, Executive Director of the Joan Ganz Cooney Center. In this case, they’re
making video games.
Coincidentally, my 8 year old son just finished a week of video game creation
summer camp. About a mile from my home, in a rented elementary school
classroom at one of suburban Philadelphia’s prep schools, folks from Active
Learning Services [16] ran a week long USAChess, video game creation, and 3D
animation camp. My eight year old son spent the week making his own games.
Charlie Edelman, a.k.a. “coach” Charlie, taught him game design vocabulary and
provided an early introduction to key ideas in computer programming.
Spending his afternoons in front of a laptop loaded with the gamemaker
software, my son learned refined brainstorming. He practiced the kind of
focused resilience it takes to realize a vision within a fixed system. He brought a
design from his imagination to the screen using contextualized problem solving,
critical thinking, and systems based storytelling skills. He learned the concept of
“iteration,” where failure is replaced with ongoing re-creation. And best of all,
when he finished, other people–campers, counselors, and me–participated in
his interactive experience.
A video game is basically an expression, like a painting, a sculpture, or a story.
And one of the key goals of education has always been to empower individuals
to articulately express themselves. Hence, academia’s over abundant reliance on
the typical 5 paragraph expository essay. Schools want to educate citizens that
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can make persuasive arguments, that are adept at the skill philosophers
traditionally called “rhetoric.”
But the interactive nature of video games makes it a decidedly different kind of
expression than expository writing. Because other people will eventually control
their creation, kids learn important lessons about subjectivity. They learn to
imagine what it would be like for other people to see things from their
perspectives. Controlling my avatar is like stepping into my shoes, exploring the
world through my eyes, valuing the way I make sense of what’s going on around
me.
The folks who created Gamestar Mechanic [17] explain that “through designing
play, in a context they find compelling and safe, students learn to think
analytically and holistically, to experiment and test out theories, and to
consider other people as part of the systems they create and inhabit.” They offer
a list of multi-disciplinary skills that students develop through a gameauthoring curriculum:
Systems-Thinking: Students design and analyze dynamic systems, a
characteristic activity in both the media and in science today
Interdisciplinary Thinking: Students solve problems that require them
to seek out and synthesize knowledge from different domains. They
become intelligent and resourceful as they learn how to find and use
information in meaningful ways
User-Centered Design: Students act as sociotechnical engineers,
thinking about how people interact with systems and how systems shape
both competitive and collaborative social interaction.
Specialist Language: Students learn to use complex technical linguistic
and symbolic elements from a variety of domains, at a variety of different
levels, for a variety of different purposes.
Meta-Level Reflection: Students learn to explicate and defend their
ideas, describe issues and interactions at a meta-level, create and test
hypotheses, and reflect on the impact of their solutions on others.
It is an impressive list of attributes that kids can develop while doing something
they love.
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[18]
"FOG" was created by STEM challenge winners Noah Ratcliff and Pamela
Pizarro-Ruiz (High School)
[19]
"Crystal Physics" was developed by STEM Challenge winner Aaron Gaudette
(High School)
The 2013 STEM Challenge winners [20]are:
Middle School (grades 5-8): Seong-Hyun Ryoo, Angel MartinezAcevedo, Nicholas Cameron, Nicolas Badila, Bradley Schmitz, Henry Edwards
and Kevin Kopczynski, Lexi Schneider.
High School (grades 9-12): Sooraj Suresh, Kieran Luscombe, Cody
Haugland, Aaron Gaudette, Brianna Igbinosun, Noah Ratcliff and Pamela
Pizarro-Ruiz, Janice Tran.
You can see descriptions and screenshots from all the winning games here [21].
Jordan Shapiro is author of FREEPLAY: A Video Game Guide to Maximum
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Euphoric Bliss [22] and co-editor of Occupy Psyche: Jungian and Archetypal
Perspectives on a Movement [23]. For information on his upcoming books and
events click here. [24]
1. http://b-i.forbesimg.com/jordanshapiro/files/2013/07/stemville1.png
2. http://gamestarmechanic.com/
3. http://www.kodugamelab.com/
4. http://www.yoyogames.com/gamemaker/studio
5. http://scratch.mit.edu/
6. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jordanshapiro/2013/07/01/it-only-takes-about-42-minutesto-learn-algebra-with-video-games/
7. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jordanshapiro/2013/07/01/it-only-takes-about-42-minutesto-learn-algebra-with-video-games/
8. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jordanshapiro/2013/02/18/how-game-based-learning-cansave-the-humanities/
9. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jordanshapiro/2013/02/18/how-game-based-learning-cansave-the-humanities/
10. http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/
11. http://elinemedia.com/
12. http://stemchallenge.org/
13. http://www.whitehouse.gov/issues/education/k-12/educate-innovate
14. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jordanshapiro/2013/04/19/white-house-science-fairacknowledges-the-importance-of-video-games/
15. http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/04/22/young-scientists-and-innovators-amazepresident-obama-white-house-science-fair
16. http://www.usachess.com/
17. http://gamestarmechanic.com/
18. http://b-i.forbesimg.com/jordanshapiro/files/2013/07/fogloadscreen.png
19. http://b-i.forbesimg.com/jordanshapiro/files/2013/07/crystalphysics1.png
20. http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/STEM-Winnerwww.forbes.com/sites/jordanshapiro/2013/07/09/are-kids-who-make-their-own-video-games-better-prepared-for-the-digital-future/
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Chart-header.pdf
21. http://www.joanganzcooneycenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/STEM-WinnerChart-header.pdf
22. http://www.amazon.com/FREEPLAY-Video-Guide-MaximumEuphoric/dp/147938643X/ref=la_B006R9HXOE_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1353193496&sr=1-1
23. http://www.amazon.com/Occupy-Psyche-Archetypal-PerspectivesMovement/dp/1477623442/ref=la_B006R9HXOE_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1353193496&sr=1-2
24. http://jordo.launchrock.com/
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