As we gear up for the long Labor Day Weekend, most are planning to relax and unwind, or perhaps to attend a barbecue or two. After all, how much can get done in a weekend? The answer: a whole lot if you’re High School team winners Noah Ratcliff and Pamela Pizarro-Ruiz. They spent a sleepless 48 hours from design to final completion on Fog, their entry to the National STEM Video Game Challenge.

Fog is a puzzle game where players uncover parts of a mysterious world as they light up a screen covered by fog. In each level, the player connects torches using his or her five senses to explore the world he can’t even see. Once lit, the screen clears to unveil a beautiful part of the world.

In an impressive display of youthful enthusiasm and stamina, Pamela and Noah developed Fog during a 48-hour online game jam, the Ludum Dare competition. The competition’s theme was announced over the weekend and the two had until Monday morning to come up with a concept and design a complete game around the idea of “Minimalism.” Most entrants had through the end of the day on Monday…but high school beckoned.

When asked about what transpired during those fateful 48 hours, Noah confesses that he doesn’t remember much. “My vision is kind of foggy now, pun not intended, I think that caffeine and lack of sleep blurred my memory. Or maybe I blocked it out.”

Pamela, however, has more memories from the experience. “It was basically a constant stream of Noah and I making levels.” We initially tried to portion it out based on our skill set. Noah would do all of the coding and I would do all of the art and design, eventually however, we were running out of time so I had to do all of the level design! But it was fine, I run on enthusiasm!” Eventually, Pamela handled all of the art assets while Noah developed the game in C# with XNA.

Before the competition, the pair practiced their process on old themes but they went into the jam cold. This was their first collaboration and Pamela’s first foray into game design.

The judges were inspired by Fog’s revolutionary gameplay; the game felt completely original and produced visceral emotional responses from many players. Amazingly, it took the pair just half an hour to come up with the idea. “Once the theme was announced, we spent about 30 minutes just researching minimalism, minimalist art, and minimalism room design. That’s how we decided that you wouldn’t need see more than you needed to see to solve each puzzle,” Noah remarked.

When asked why they choose to make their first collaboration so frantic, the two commented that it didn’t feel that way. Pamela says, “I’d seen Noah try game jams before and it looked like so much fun to work with that community. I was Noah’s emotional support through his first game jam and I really wanted to try it out!” The pair were friends from their school’s Tech Club and, when not frantically developing games, describe their interests as “typical teen stuff.”

When not programming, developer Noah likes to swim, hang out with friends, and play video games. Pamela, the team’s artist, confesses that most of her time is spent drawing. When not filling up sketch books, she can be found playing clarinet in the school band.

Noah has been coding since he was 8 years old. His dad was in college and taking a course on visual basic. After his dad showed him the language, Noah was hooked on object oriented program and began learning more and more about coding and website development. “I’ve grown a lot and made a lot of applications since then, but I’ve only been designing games for about a year.” He hopes to go to college for Interactive Media Design and eventually work at or own his own indie game studio, “I like working in small teams and seeing the game’s big picture.”

Pamela, meanwhile, was a novice to game design before the STEM Challenge. Although she loves to play games in her spare time, Pamela is more focused on drawing, illustrating, and photography. “I love playing games, but I don’t have too much time to play because I’m always drawing; I’ve filled up over 29 sketch books.” However, she loved working on Fog so much that she is now exploring game design careers. “I used to want to be an illustrator but now I think that it would be crazy awesome to be a video game designer!”

The pair has spent their summer further developing Fog to release it commercially. They were always planning on adding more mystery to their game, but the STEM Challenge gave them renewed energy to follow their dream. They can’t wait to work with their school’s Tech Club to help other budding designers and we can’t wait for Fog’s commercial release! And, until then, we’ll be watching their wonderful gameplay video.

EdSurge has assembled a great primer on  games and learning Playing Games in School: When games make a difference in education. This online resource takes a high-level look at Games and Learning and features insights from leading scholars and practitioners in the field, including James Paul Gee and Joel Levin. The collection features a guide to twenty great educational games and examines the many roles that games can play in education, especially when students create their own. The Cooney Center’s Executive Director Michael Levine’s contribution, Beyond Good and Bad: Applying Games Research to Action, looks at the market’s take on game based learning and summarizes researchers and teachers’ attitudes towards games in education.

Additionally, the compilation features commentary by many of the Cooney Center’s partners. Arizona State University’s James Paul Gee discusses the pitfalls when games align themselves closely with national assessments in Games, Standards, and Assessments. E-Line Media’s Alan Gershenfeld talks about publishing strategies for growing educational games to scale. Frequent collaborator Idit Haper Caperton looks at the importance of teaching Game Design and even calls out some STEM Challenge Winners!

We encourage you to check out the EdSurge Guide to learn about these and other exciting developments in game based learning. And share your thoughts with us!

Lexi Schneider is an artist, basketball player, and incredibly curious about the world around her…so curious in fact, that on her first foray into game design, she won the Best Written Middle School Game in the National STEM Video Game Challenge.

“Head of the Class,” a written entry, takes place in a virtual school where each level is a different animation, inspired by classic comic strips. After a brief video introduction, the player is challenged to solve puzzles within each comic strip. Lexi says that when she isn’t sketching or playing sports, she loves to read. “I love comics and decided to make one because it combines my two interests: reading and art.”

Lexi’s brother initially inspired her to enter the competition. “He has always been really interested in making games and I knew that he was going to enter the contest. As I watched him code it seemed really cool, and since I didn’t know how to do that, he suggested that I enter a Written game.” Not only did Lexi’s brother help her enter the competition, he provided help throughout the competition and “is really who got me through it!”

Once she realized she could enter a written game, Lexi began thinking of ways to combine what she was doing in school with her long-standing artistic drive. At school, Lexi began exploring digital art. “I’ve always loved art but I believe that the computer represents the future of art. I wanted to make sure I made a really visual game.” Eager to explore how technology could enhance her drawings, Lexi decided to use Flash to animate her ideas.

Supported by her brother, who introduced her the basics before the competition, Lexi found herself discovering tips and tricks and eventually teaching herself. This same problem-solving nature can be explored in Head of the Class, her winning game. Just as the player searches for clues in the game, “I looked for clues and tricks to make learning Flash fun!”

Entering the competition has encouraged Lexi to keep coding. “I got such a high from making a game that I decided to spend my summer learning java so I can make real games in the future. Winning was so exciting but there is so much more out there!” Lexi is drawing on her family support system to get started. In addition to her brother’s support, she is taking an online class that her mom found. Lexi also spent her summer in art, basketball and soccer camps.

The Cooney Center is excited that, with such a broad range of interests, Lexi is now considering a career in computers or graphics. Wherever she winds up, we can’t wait to see where her new coding skills take her.

We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve submitted two panel proposals to SXSWEdu. We’ve lined up some great speakers, and can’t wait to share their insights with you.

So we need your help! Please take a couple of minutes to register at http://panelpicker.sxsw.com – it’s free and easy! Learn more about the panels that we’ve proposed below, and then vote for us – it’s that simple.

Our panels:

Apps with Impact in the Digital Wild West
In a knowledge-based, global economy, knowing how to read well is more important than ever, and yet a large majority of the coming generation — two-thirds of America’s children — are leaving elementary and middle schools with distressingly weak reading skills.  And, unfortunately tens of billions of dollars have been spent on reading intervention programs in the past decade with little measurable impact. Can new technologies be a game changer? Although well-developed apps hold the potential to both engage and educate struggling learners, very few have tamed the market.   This panel discussion will explore pathways to pioneering smart, curated distribution systems and new revenue models.  Leaders from the research, distribution, app creation and education frontiers will share their own successes and failures and answer questions from the audience. See more and vote.

Lost in Translation: Applying the Latest Research
?The gaming industry has grown to be a $65 billion-a-year industry, with products ranging from traditional arcade-style shooter games to increasingly complex tools for learning and education. Although games have made their way into classrooms and informal learning outlets for decades, funders and producers are often left to their own devices when trying to meet the needs of teachers and students. Research that could benefit new work too often remains trapped in scholarly journals, accessible to only other researchers. How can the important studies make their way into the decisions made by game developers and the funders who support them? Drawing on the unique perspectives from investment, game creation and education experts, this panel will extract in real time the important takeaways from a new piece of research. We will kick off with a video interview of the report’s author, discuss the specific study, provide tips for translating future research and open discussion to the audience.? See more and vote.

Continuing our spotlight on the STEM Challenge Winners, we are pleased to introduce you to Kieran Luscombe, winner of the Gamestar Mechanic High School prize.

When presented with a set of tools, Kieran says that he always “finds a use for everything and then I use it to the best of my ability.” And by always pushing himself, he managed to create An Untold Adventure, the best High School Gamestar Mechanic game, in this year’s National STEM Video Game Challenge!

A 10th grader from Thornton, CO, Kieran was first introduced to Gamestar Mechanic through a school elective on game design. Kieran has always loved playing games, thinking about games, and even dreamed of designing video games, but was unsure where to begin. Unlike many winners, he had a lot of experience creating his own paper-based games. Kieran even created his own RPG that he and his friends enjoyed playing at recess and when hanging out. However, he had little exposure to computer programming. Once he heard of the school elective, he finally had an opportunity to flex the gaming skills he’d been honing for years.

In the class, Kieran was not taught to program; rather, “We learned how to use [game] mechanics and story to create a really unique experience for the player,” he said. “I loved learning about how to plan games and the philosophies behind what makes a game fun!”

The course’s focus on design rather than code allowed Kieran to gain programming experience through Gamestar Mechanic and for his designs to flourish despite much programming experience. Kieran admits that he had tried to use other design tools before but found that all of his games had to be “on the smaller scale because I didn’t have the programming chops to create my visions.”

As a final project, students were tasked to make the best game they could and then given the option of submitting it to the STEM Challenge. Kieran knew that for his game to stand out he had to show the judges that he understood Gamestar Mechanic even better than they did. His trick? “Find a new use for everything! Sometimes the game would suggest a purpose for some of the creatures, but I always tried to re-imagine how I could use each item. I had a vision and I knew that, sometimes, the only way to build it was to find new ways to use each item.”

However, he acknowledges that it wasn’t just his clever problem solving that saved the day. Kieran’s teacher, Mr. Murphy, “was a BIG help.” He would teach the class gaming trips and common traps. “He always pushed us and found the ways that each individual could improve his or her ability.”

Kieran had more than just a teacher as support, he was able to draw upon years of creating worlds in Minecraft and of designing his own model railroad set. “I guess I’ve always loved to build things,” he acknowledges. Kieran first began creating trains, spaceships, and legos when he was a kid and that creative spirit has persisted. When not running cross-country or hanging out with friends, he spends his time working on a model railroad with his dad and younger brother.

Working on the railroad helped Kieran flex his design skills and helped him develop the problem-solving skills that helped him throughout the competition. Perhaps, most significantly, it taught him persistence and to never give up when things get complex. He and his family have been collaborating on the railroad for the past nine years!  Kieran has no interest in stopping. He confesses, “some say a model railroad never stops growing…”

And we hope that Kieran’s passion for creating games never stops growing, and it looks like it won’t. For Kieran, winning the competition was exciting because “now I can use the laptop that I won to teach myself to program!” He has already been reading through other designers’ codes to teach himself tricks and can’t wait to create his next game. He doesn’t know what his future holds but hopes that he can keep building.

Workshops took place at HIVE partner organizations throughout New York City.

Now that the 2013 National STEM Video Game Challenge has wrapped up, we are busy analyzing the results of this year’s competition and the activities that surrounded it. One of the areas we’ve been digging into are the game design workshops that took place around the country with the support of organizations like the Institute of Museum and Library Sciences and the HIVE Digital Media Learning Fund in the New York Community Trust.  In this post, we’ll look at some of the workshops that took place in New York City thanks to the generous support of the HIVE.

This spring, the Cooney Center, Global Kids, and E-Line Media led 11 workshops with the HIVE that reached more than 230 middle and high school students throughout New York City. These workshops were intended to spark an interest in STEM, especially among minorities and females since these groups are currently underrepresented in STEM careers, and promote participation in the National STEM Video Game Challenge.

There were two kinds of workshops this year: one focused on core elements of game design and introduced students to the Gamestar Mechanic game design platform, and the other taught students how to pitch game design ideas to a panel of expert video game designers from companies such as E-Line Media and BrainPop. Participants were encouraged to apply the skills they acquired at the workshops to create their own games to submit to the National STEM Video Game Challenge. Youth mentors from Global Kids, E-Line and Hive community staff members led all of the workshops, which took place at the American Museum of Natural History, Brooklyn Public Library, Global Kids, Iridescent, Museum of the Moving Image, New York Hall of Science, New York Public Library, and THE POINT.

All workshop participants—students, youth mentors, and institutional leaders—were invited to complete surveys about their experience. We were delighted by the results, which suggest that students who attended enjoyed learning game design at the workshops. Out of the 175 students who filled out the survey, 91% “strongly agreed” or “agreed” that the workshop met their expectations and they learned what they were hoping to learn. Moreover, 92% of respondents reported that they would recommend the workshop, and many students noted that they learned a lot from the workshop, often commenting that it was “helpful” and “useful.” Students described the workshop as “fun,” “interesting,” “exciting”—and even “cool.” And the workshops may have long-term impacts on some students’ career path: 40% of students surveyed reported that the workshops inspired them to pursue a video game or technology-based career.

We’re grateful to our partners and sponsors for making the National STEM Challenge an exciting and productive project for all involved. It’s exciting to see the impact that workshops like those developed for the Hive can have on kids.  In a future post, we will delve into the national outreach that is underway to a fantastic group of museums, libraries and STEM-oriented after school programs, with generous support from the Institute for Museum and Library Services.  As a preview, you can see a local news station’s coverage of a workshop that took place in Madison, Wisconsin below.

Each week, we are introducing you to a winner of the STEM Challenge. Last week, we profiled Brianna Igbnosun, the Scratch High School Winner, and this week we are thrilled to introduce you to Brad Schmitz, the Scratch Middle School winner.

An 8th grader from Glandorf, Ohio, Brad Schmitz is a Boy Scout who sees himself as “more outgoing than most.” His curious nature prompts him to try things that most would never consider and to always push himself. And these skills helped him design the cleverly-addicting Pixel Jet.

Brad first started using Scratch at a summer tech camp three years ago, “and I’ve been toying with it ever since.” The camp introduced him to Scratch and a range of movie, image, and music editing software. More significantly, it gave him the skills to teach himself new tricks and tools. “I keep trying to do new things with them. If it doesn’t work then I try again from a new angle. But once you figure something out, you can keep building on it and growing your projects’ complexity.”

Camp got Brad hooked on game design and he’s been designing ever since. Brad loves the Scratch community and how players can learn from one another. “I love getting to say I’ve made a mark on the world with my own game. It is a great experience to know that other users enjoy your work and that people can use it to make their own. In Scratch, at least 10 people have made remixes of it!”

Given his passion, Brad knew that he wanted to enter the National STEM Video Game Challenge and began work on his game in December, well before the competition began. He spent a lot of time in the brainstorming phase. “I knew I needed a game that would start out so simple that anyone could play but would quickly get more challenging to keep players interested.”

Brad decided to theme his game around aviation and sci-fi because “they’re so cool.” Plus, Brad wanted to design all of the artwork himself and he knew he would do a great job sketching those elements. Perhaps, most impressively, Brad composed and edited all of the music for his game.

Yes, when Brad isn’t designing games, he is also an accomplished musician. He plays six instruments and has been composing his own music since the 6th grade. Brad first experimented with composition when creating music for a game. He did a bit of research into music software and has spent the past two years “teaching myself how different elements fit together and sound together. As I’ve matured, I’ve learned to layer features and experiment in the same way I would when coding.”

So is Brad the next Bach or a budding designer? He hopes to pursue both interests by continuing to teach himself new software programs and experimenting with new tricks. Ultimately, “I hope that when I learn calculus and more physics in school I can use those in my games! I love physics so hopefully I’ll major in physics in college.” And for his next video game? “I’m going to sell my next game to pay for college.”

Brad thinks that the best part of winning has been his ability to inspire other kids. He wants more kids to try game design and coding. “The more I learned, the less ashamed I felt over not always fitting in with athletics. It is so powerful to make something and be able to use it. Looking at all the winners’ games made me so hopeful that people won’t sit on their butt and eat chips but will tinker and make their own fun!”

Back in 2010, Motion Math was a finalist in the first Cooney Center Prizes for Mobile Learning. They’ve continued to make some amazing apps since then, including Motion Math Zoom, Motion Math: Hungry Fish, and more.  CEO and co-founder Jacob Klein shares some of the inspiration behind the creation of their latest app, Questimate!, a game that makes estimation fun.

Our new estimation game Questimate! came out a couple weeks ago. It’s the first game where players make their own questions. Critics dig it so far, and some have asked us how exactly we developed the game. Where did it come from? Here are four main inspirations:

1. Parents and teachers repeatedly told us that their kids struggle with estimation, measurement, and real world math. There’s often a disconnect between abstract math over here on the chalkboard, and all the real-world math that kids do (even if they don’t know they’re doing it) over there. (Shelley Goldman’s Family Math Project at Stanford highlights just how many ways families do math without realizing it.) So we wanted a game to build estimation skills.

2. The Maker movement. EdSurge invited us last year to the first EdTech tent at MakerFaire and the enthusiasm we saw from kids blew us away — they’re so inspired and energized when put in control! So we wondered: what would it mean for kids to be in control of a learning game? That question lead us to the central game mechanic of Questimate! — making your own questions.

3. The wild comparisons and facts from Wikipedia and the web and Guinness Book of World Records that people share in person, on Reddit’s “Today I Learned“, and other places. Often, in conversation, people will ask the other person to guess (“Guess how many Earths away from Earth the moon is?”) It’s a social way to heighten the wow-factor, more than simply telling the other person a fact.

4. Dan Meyer’s work on Perplexity and research findings such as the recent one that hands-on interactive activities work best at the beginning of a lesson. Most math textbooks “pre-chew” away the mystery from real-world math problems by presenting total, perfect information. We wanted a game that confronts the player with rough, challenging, visceral questions. If there’s continuing interest, players can dig into the web source for the information and the precise math behind the answer. But we don’t start with information: we start with an interesting question; in the case of Questimate!, it’s a question the player has created.

CEO and co-founder Jacob Klein is a media producer, educator, and software developer. He’s earned several Stanford degrees: a B.S. in Symbolic Systems, a Master’s in Learning, Design, and Technology, and a hearty pat on the back from the Summer Institute for Entrepreneurship. Jacob won a Loeb (business journalism’s highest award) for a seven-part Lehrer NewsHour series he co-produced and edited; as an educator, Jacob tutored students in math and writing, and taught at a KIPP charter school. He’s excited to build Motion Math into a company that can provide many playful, rigorous learning experiences.