Using Technology to Support Early STEM
In April, the White House hosted an Early STEM Learning Symposium with the U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human Services and Invest in US to discuss the importance of active science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) learning for our youngest children. Just a few months later, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and New America convened leaders from research, policy, philanthropy, and practice to follow up on the White House symposium and create a national action agenda for early STEM learning.
Since then, the momentum around #STEMStartsEarly has continued to build, and the STEM Office of the Department of Education has embraced technology as a way of gathering leaders online with a series of Google Hangouts to discuss issues around creating pathways for teaching STEM to young children. In this first hangout, which took place on July 13, 2016, Cooney Center Fellow Elisabeth McClure joined Melissa Moritz, Deputy Director, Office of STEM, Libby Doggett, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Policy and Early Learning, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, and Russell Shilling, Executive Director of STEM, as well as Andrew Machles (Nickelodeon), Kim Brenneman, (The Heising-Simons Foundation), Emily Roden (Ready Rosie), and Celine Willard from the Jim Henson Company. You can watch the entire conversation below.
Join the next Hangout on Wednesday, August 3 for a discussion on system-wide efforts to support early STEM learning.
Preparing Students for Professional Game-Design Careers
The STEM Challenge team recently co-hosted a workshop at the The Tech Museum of Innovation with Cogswell College. John Duhring, Director, Strategic Alliances and Alumni Relations, provides some insight into some career paths for students interested in exploring a future in game design and development.
Students learn about the benefits of developing their STEM expertise at a recent National STEM Video Game Challenge workshop co-hosted by Cogswell College at the Tech Museum of Innovation.
There is an urgent call across U.S. universities to better prepare students for careers. Current research reveals that students decide to go to college primarily to improve their employment opportunities. They look to colleges to equip them to work not only in traditional jobs, but to also prepare them for a world that is changing beyond description. They are fully aware that pursuing narrow silos of knowledge defined by academic disciplines may not help their careers as much as acquiring useful skills and the disposition to put what they have learned to effective use. Rather than sit through lectures, take quizzes and prepare for graduate schools, undergraduate students are increasingly opting to practice in college what they hope to pursue as a career.
For students with aspirations of careers in high tech, this means learning to work as part of a multi-disciplinary team in which roles change over time. No longer does a college graduate specialize in a single field and practice at increasing levels of responsibility for a single employer. Particularly here in Silicon Valley, graduates are thrust into dynamic environments and often given “make or break” responsibilities right off the bat. With success, they might be asked to move from, say, engineering to product management, to developer relations and on to marketing roles. They must relearn everything as technologies and markets change. They must repeatedly form new teams and embark on new missions with the gusto that can only come from loving what they do.
In this kind of environment, there may be no better career preparation than through degree programs in game design and development. Making games in college means working with teams of other students to combine art with technology to tell stories. It also happens to be a powerful way to dive into physics, history, linguistics, and other academic disciplines. Students are given increasing responsibility as their skills and professionalism mature. They can take on leadership roles on meaningful projects. They can bring inexperienced members of a team up to speed. They can try out new roles and work on new projects every semester, in an environment in which it is safe to fail. By learning from industry experts, using the latest technology and observing how their peers operate, college students augment their academic foundation with real world experience. Ultimately, these students create their own path through college, just as they will called upon to do throughout their careers.
Over 300 colleges and universities have established degree-granting baccalaureate programs. What if going to college was more like working in a game development studio? That is exactly what drives the curriculum at Cogswell College in San Jose, California. Students earn a fully accredited bachelors degree while gaining valuable industry experience by working with real clients and their peers to produce real games. Somewhat surprisingly, the “soft skills” of creative storytelling, critical thinking and managing multi-disciplinary teams provides the essence of the professional they become along the way.
At Cogswell, we regularly ask students to describe what they are working on. It’s often a challenge for new students to articulate the purpose of their work and their role in it, so we make videos of more accomplished students as they gain a sense of their professional direction. After they have graduated, their interviews describe some of the career options offered by the video game industry. The salaries noted are for starting positions. Accomplished graduates can see dramatic increases in compensation based on their professional capacities.
Concept Artist: Katie Fortune works at Machine Zone, the makers of Mobile Strike and the RealTime platform. She was interviewed while she was just learning about storyboarding and working with engineeers to build interactive experiences. The Glassdoor.com salary database reports starting salaries for 2D artists with the ability to sketch out characters, scenarios and stories average above $50,000 per year.
Technical Artist: Bugi Kaigwa works at Visual Concepts, the developer behind Take-Two’s interactive sports games, such as NBA2K. Technical artists develop the “rigging” of digital characters, the handles and structures that enable animators to make them move realistically. Glassdoor sites beginning technical artists average salaries of over $60,000 per year.
Game Engineering Manager: Sean Langhi worked at Google and then joined a start-up as co-founder. Typically, college students do not gain management experience while in college. Video game engineering managers salaries start over $65,000 per year, reports Glassdoor. Sean and Bugi speak about their roles building a video game in college.
Interactive Sound Engineering: Every video game injects realism into the experience through sounds that map to the users behaviors. Kaleb Grace now works as a Senior Software Engineer at Disney Interactive. Glassdoor suggests that starting sound engineering salaries start around $60,000. Kaleb talks about his experience in a school project.
Developer Support Engineer: Working with talented teams takes special skills. Tobiah Zarlez works for Microsoft as a Game Evangelist. According to Glassdoor, developer relations salaries start at $60,000. Tobiah speaks of his experiences managing the Game Development Club when he was a student.
Most students enter a game design program without a clear idea of the multitude of jobs to be filled in one of the most dynamic industries ever created. By making games in college, students discover where their skills and passions map to industry needs. Those who have a sense of purpose, who know what they are looking for or where they want to go, have a better chance at being accepted into college game programs. While their paths might change as they learn more about the industry, their passion, their skills and their ability to work in team settings make for highly desirable career outcomes.
A graduate of UC Berkeley, John Duhring has applied technology to learning at Prentice-Hall, Dow Jones, Apple and for Stanford’s Professional Publishing Courses. He manages community affairs at Cogswell College in San Jose, California.
Good Narrative, Good Game
Global Kids, Inc. works to ensure that youth from underserved areas have the knowledge, skills, experiences and values they need to succeed in school, participate effectively in the democratic process, and achieve leadership in their communities and on the global stage. Many of the students in their programs are creating games eligible for submission into the 2016 National STEM Video Game Challenge.
Through in-school and after-school Global Kids (GK) programs, middle school and high school students examine global issues, make local connections, and create change through peer education, social action, digital media, and service-learning, while receiving intensive support from GK staff.
Photo: Global Kids
Games-based learning is fun, effective and powerful, but it doesn’t come without its challenges. At Global Kids we run a few different game design programs which address social and global issues. One obstacle we’ve faced across programs is immersing our youth in developing comprehensive narratives to support the mechanics, goals and other elements of their games. There’s a ton to cover with the principles of game design and computational thinking alone, how does the art of narrative storytelling fit into all of this and is it a priority?
Powerful games usually have powerful narratives, which can take players on an unforgettable journey. The graphics of a maze game which depict the gradual degradation of a forest from level to level, the tools a sprite is equipped with to bounce back from attack and how the clock counts down with every life lost are all elements which support pieces of a story. It’s these small details, particularly in social impact games, which can engross players in the issues and a call to action. So the question remains, how do we teach youth to tell good stories that are then represented in games? What does that process look like?
At Global Kids, our most successful learning experiences for our youth have begun with deconstructing popular games and exposing them to the array of people and skills who create them, united by one vision. This includes the writer, artist, engineer, product designer, etc. and how they leverage character development, animation, coding and marketing to produce one comprehensive game. This can help educators reveal how games are embodied narrative, where the authors have worked together to construct a world, a series of experiences, and empathized with the game player to prepare a journey for them. Over the last six months, we’ve redesigned pieces of our curriculum to incorporate more time for creative writing, storyboarding and other exercises focused on developing compelling narratives and the vision that everyone on the team is working toward. To support the development of a common vision, like a literature or film class, we facilitate workshops on the hero’s journey before youth start coding sprites or enemies so that they have a foundation to build on. Once they have a clear understanding of their hero’s journey, youth are prepared to determine what the game character (and therefore the game player) knows, what choices the player has available to them, what abilities they have, and what will motivate and challenge them along their journey to the winning goal. We’ve discovered great tools like Storybird to help youth exercise these underused skills in an interactive, collaborative and fun way to support this framework. Equipping our students with robust storytelling skills ensures that they don’t produce games which are lost in mechanics.
For the all the games-based educators out there, what are your tools/techniques for weaving narrative into the game design process?
Lessons from Dora the Explorer
Two of the leading researchers involved with preschool television program Dora the Explorer, Head of Education Research Mariana Díaz-Wionczek and Creative/Cultural Advisor Carlos Cortés, describe how the show evolved from merely featuring a Latina character to intentionally teaching Spanish, highlighting dual language capabilities, and promoting Latino culture.
It was the early 2000s when Carlos Cortés, professor (now emeritus) at UC Riverside, and Mariana Díaz Wionczek, researcher, joined the production team of the fledgling series Dora the Explorer. At that time, these two key contributors to the Dora programs—which also included Go Diego Go and Dora and Friends—could not have imagined the “crossover” phenomenon that the shows would become and the impact they would have on millions of children and families during their 15 years of production. Cortés, who advised the Dora team from the first season in 2000, and Díaz-Wionczek, who joined after the third season, each trace a long arc with the program and reflect on many changes–in the show, the characters, and in the world around them.
A movement to showcase the value of dual language
Díaz-Wionczek recalls that when her work with Dora began, one of the major changes she spearheaded was to incorporate more Spanish and create greater equality between the languages and the characters who speak them. When she joined the team, the show had already aired for three seasons and was ripe for more development. “At that time the show was really successful and because of that success we had an opportunity to revisit the curriculum and make it better, or just more challenging overall,” she remembers. “One of the areas we identified that had a lot of potential for change and improvement was Spanish.”
The decision to focus on Spanish language in the curriculum was based in the research Díaz-Wionczek and colleagues were conducting on each and every episode with children in classrooms. Perhaps contrary to expectations, they found that children were eager to speak in a language they may not already know. “When we were testing the content of the episodes in the field, the kids were really willing and wanting to try to speak a second language, in this case Spanish,” recalls Díaz-Wionczek. “They had no problem to say a combination of words or a full phrase. That was a key piece [in our decision] to push the bar a bit.”
These findings, and the continued success of Dora, led the team to deepen the show’s connection to Spanish and Latino culture. “When you start a show, you don’t know it’s going to be a great success. Many shows aren’t,” reflects Cortés. At first, the team’s goals centered around creating a show that was entertaining and that addressed Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences (which include visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and other ways of learning), and Latino culture was less of a primary ingredient. However, by the fourth season of Dora, Cortés recalls, “we were more intentional about culture, more intentional about language learning, and about the symbolic meaning of [characters] Boots and Tico and how they functioned as an English learner and a Spanish learner.”
In order to achieve their goals, Díaz-Wionczek and the team consulted with dual immersion educators in order to explore how the show might model a more bidirectional approach to language learning. In the first few seasons, Dora had acted as the main mediator between English-speaking and Spanish-speaking characters. The team now began to focus on creating an environment in which English- and Spanish-speakers were learning from one another.
The “First Day of School” episode of Dora the Explorer aired during the show’s fifth season in September 2008
The “First Day of School” episode was the first to really highlight the new language strategy—it contained much more Spanish than previous episodes, and the content tested well with children. A key representation of the show’s new language approach is the pair of characters, Boots and Tico. Boots, a monkey, is a monolingual English speaker, while the squirrel Tico is a monolingual Spanish speaker. Dora helps to bridge understanding between speakers of different languages in the show.
The 15 years of Dora’s production also saw changes in how families in the U.S. view dual language abilities and the desirability of language immersion approaches—in part due to a growing body of research showing the cognitive benefits of learning more than one language. Díaz-Wionczek and Cortés argue that Dora too was part of this shift in how society views bilingualism.
Growing phenomenon, growing responsibility
Dora’s popularity also created a strong sense of responsibility to present a positive and just portrayal of bilinguals that showcased their skills and strengths. “[Dora’s] resolution of problems comes from her dual culture and dual language abilities. She can do it because she can cross over. We made more of the episodes focus on the dimension,” explains Cortés.
As part of creating a more equitable portrayal, the producers also shifted the characters’ language abilities over time. At first, Boots was learning Spanish as a result of his interactions with other characters in the show, but Spanish-speaking Tico was not learning any English. The team felt that this was unfair and a poor representation of the abilities of Spanish speakers, and made changes such that Tico began learning English as well.
The research team also found that over time, children’s reactions to Dora’s bilingual capabilities changed in positive ways. In the early days of research, the team found that children wanted to speak the words Dora was saying. After time though, they found that many children showed a new pride in language abilities, particularly the Spanish-speaking children. “The world has transformed to being more accepting of a second language,” Díaz-Wionczek suggests. “Dora was part of that transformation to aspire to second language.” They also found that Hispanic-Latino parents were increasingly using Dora to infuse Spanish language and Latino culture at home, and that English-speaking families were becoming interested in doing the same, even if they had no Hispanic-Latino heritage.
“When I give a lecture I’ll have at least one person in the audience who says how much Dora has meant to them,” says Cortés. “There was a disappearance of embarrassment. Dora made it okay. Non-Spanish-speaking parents were taking pride in their kids learning Spanish from Dora.”
Challenges and New Frontiers
The biggest challenge in the 15 years of creating the show was how to keep the content fresh and exciting. The structure of the show, which was based on Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, provided guidance for the show’s writers, but could also sometimes be confining. To address this, the team created different themes for each season, such as health and wellness, or conserving the environment.
A second challenge was to create a “pan-Latino” identity that would reflect the diverse Hispanic-Latino population and allow viewers from a variety of backgrounds to feel represented. Although some argued for giving Dora a specific nationality or background, the team ultimately decided to keep it unspecified. Cortés was a strong advocate for this approach, and feels it was a good decision. The Spanish language used in the show was also chosen to be familiar to all Spanish-speakers, which can be challenging given the myriad regional variations. While making sure Dora’s character and language were accessible to a wide Hispanic-Latino audience, the team strove to promote diversity. “Diversity has to be cherished, not watered down,” says Cortés.
Toward the end of its 15 years in production, Dora also encountered challenges. Díaz-Wionczek attributes the decline at least in part to changes in the show itself, including aspects of the Dora and Friends spinoff, as well as changes in the children’s media landscape overall. Dora and Friends presented the Dora character as an older child, with a different cast of characters. “It was not totally the right fit for the audience,” Díaz-Wionczek suggests. However, a fundamental upset to the program was the advent of mobile media and the proliferation of many high quality children’s programs. “There are many high quality choices. For a long time, the choice was Dora,” says Díaz-Wionczek. “Now there are other quality products that are like Dora. Kids are watching multiple things,” ultimately making it more difficult for Dora to attract as large a share of the market.
Both Díaz-Wionczek and Cortés mourn the end of Dora’s production and the diverse, open-minded team they collaborated with and describe as truly unique. They also see some positive changes in the ongoing trends of children’s media. When asked what is still missing in children’s media today, Díaz-Wionczek suggests multicultural characters are still under-represented, but that is changing. “Sometimes you see multicultural cast, but they are in a box,” she observes. “Now I see it happening less. They are more multidimensional.”
As the first “Dora generation” graduates from high school, the Dora creators have questions about long-term impacts they would love to answer. “We don’t know… is their exposure to Dora having some lifelong effect?” wonders Cortés. “We are waiting to see what the message will be as they become adults.”
Exploring Moholy-Nagy’s Artistic Process to Create Video Games
Discussing the work of Students discuss the work of Moholy-Nagy during a tour of the Guggenheim Museum.
What does László Moholy-Nagy, a Hungarian artist active during the early 1900s, have to do with video game design? The National STEM Video Game Challenge and the Guggenheim Museum’s art education team partnered up last month to host a workshop that explored ways to apply Moholy-Nagy’s artistic process to the practice of game development.
In preparation for the workshop, the STEM Challenge team visited the museum to tour the current exhibition, Moholy-Nagy: Future Present. Working with the educators at the Guggenheim, we explored the best ways to teach Moholy-Nagy’s artistic philosophies.
Moholy-Nagy focused on process. He understood that in order to become a photographer he needed to understand light. Moreover, he focused on the intentionality of art creation— in his work, instructions were a part of the design. His work had process, and goals. He also experimented with the emerging technologies of his day.
Video game designers have to employ intentionality in game development. Each step taken towards the production of a game needs to be carefully thought out and considered within the larger context of the game. For example, when creating the rules of the game, you need to also consider the mechanics, goals, space, and components at play. These are the five elements of game design.
We chose a series of activities that highlighted the importance of intentionality within the design process. Students went on a special tour of the exhibit at the Guggenheim, with discussions about Moholy-Nagy’s work and practices along the way.
Students participate in a workshop at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City.
After the tour, students created games with just a bag of miscellaneous items, without any specific guidelines. The activity encouraged students to tap into their creativity while also considering the challenges of intentionality within game development. Finally, in the last hour students began to develop games on computers using Gamestar Mechanic.
Many of the students were surprised that a video game design workshop devoted only a quarter of the time to computer-based game development. But a lot of game development isn’t about the actual programming—though programming skills are important too. Moholy-Nagy spent years trying to understand light before he began taking profound photographs and creating his famous works with shadows, just as game developers need to spend time developing the elements of their game before going on to the programming phase.
Sloane Grinspoon is an intern at the Cooney Center this summer, working with the National STEM Video Game Challenge team. She studies Psychology at Cornell University.
Getting Creative with Maker Spaces at the Capitol Hill Maker Faire
This past week, the Institute of Museum and Library Services hosted The Capitol Hill Maker Faire as a part of the White House’s National Week of Making. The STEM Challenge attended the Faire to network with other organizations and spaces that are also devoted to making and innovation.
Girl Scouts attending the Capitol Hill Maker Faire showcase the games they programmed in Scratch.
The Faire explored the best practices and challenges of the maker community, in order to foster educators’ and community leaders’ efforts to further innovation across the country. The organizations represented at the Faire varied greatly—from libraries with tech programs to Girl Scouts displaying robots their troops made. The event featured both panel discussions and an opportunity for participants to showcase their work in booths.
One relevant panel discussion, entitled Making and Lifelong Learning, focused on the informal maker space. Panelists included Janet Auer of Chevron, Andrea Saenz of the Chicago Public Library, Janella Watson of the New York Hall of Science, and Shawn Grimes of the Digital Harbor Foundation. They discussed the big trends in the evolution of these community spaces, the importance of designing inclusive maker spaces, and the barriers to expanding the impact and sustainability of these programs.
The maker space is unique. It is a space that allows for users to be messy and creative — without the pressures and restrictions of school or work. Maker spaces are open workshops with equipment for users to create something. They range from fully equipped wood working shops to tech spaces with 3-D printers and computers.
The Digital Harbor Foundation is a maker space in Baltimore, MD.
The panelists advised that maker space creators should consider allowing users access to the space without specific guidelines or restrictions—let the space respond to the makers who use it. The focus should be mostly on fostering creativity and passion for making, and not on the space itself. Also, a collaborative process should be used to design the space in the first place, so that users will best utilize the space.
A specific concern that was raised was the issue of inclusivity. Panelists discussed how to make spaces feel accessible and welcoming for the elderly, for underprivileged students, and others. Speakers stressed the importance of considering how maker spaces brand themselves, to think about the invitation they’re extending—and to whom.
In order to maintain and build these spaces, it is important to demonstrate how these open spaces with resources help users innovate, and what maker space opportunities do for students and community members alike. The National STEM Video Game Challenge has hosted workshops in these maker spaces, like the TechShop in Pittsburgh. We have seen firsthand the benefits of supporting community spaces designed for people to innovate.
Sloane Grinspoon is an intern at the Cooney Center this summer, working with the National STEM Video Game Challenge team. She studies Psychology at Cornell University.
