Submissions for the 2016 National STEM Video Game Challenge closed Monday, August 15 and we’re extremely impressed by the nearly 5,000 students across the United States who registered. As we head into the screening and judging process, we’re excited to share what’s next for the STEM Challenge—and to reflect on what we’ve accomplished in just five years.

Getting to Know the STEM Challenge Judging Process

Our team is currently screening all of the STEM Challenge submissions, scoring each game design with criteria focused on engaging, well-balanced gameplay and innovative/creative vision. In early September, the strongest entries from each category will advance as finalists and be evaluated by a panel of expert judges working in game design, education, and policy. Winners will be notified at the end of September and, pending verification, will be announced publicly at the National Awards Ceremony in early November.

Recognizing New Developments in Outreach

Throughout the 2016 cycle, we’ve been energized and inspired by our work with museums, libraries, schools, camps, community organizations, and other groups. Thanks to a second year of generous funding from our national Community Sponsor the Institute of Museum and Library Services, we hosted over 20 workshops across the country during the 2016 cycle. We conducted an additional 20 workshops within the greater Pittsburgh area through dedicated funding from The Grable Foundation, our Regional Spotlight Program Sponsor.

Overall, outreach for this year’s challenge differed from past cycles in three important ways, allowing us to reach more students across the country than ever before. Here’s what we’ve learned.

1. Focus on Sustainability

In an effort to increase the sustainability of youth game making and STEM-related initiatives, we developed train-the-trainer workshops to build out local capacity for replicating STEM Challenge workshops with new audiences. Train-the-trainer workshops were conducted with librarians, teachers, mentors, and other educators in communities across the country, including Chattanooga, Chicago, Madison, San Jose, Tampa, and Washington, DC. Following their training, these local leaders provided robust learning experiences for youth in the area, including mentoring sessions from regional experts, play-testing opportunities, and even game submission parties.

Attendees at a special workshop at the Library of Congress learned about historical game design. Photo via the Library of Congress.

2. Connect with a Wide Variety of Students

Research shows that women and minorities are disproportionately underrepresented in STEM fields, making it more important than ever to expand outreach efforts in early STEM education. For the 2016 STEM Challenge cycle, we worked closely with local organizations and outreach partners to connect directly with students from often underrepresented populations.

• We facilitated learning experiences for youth in rural areas and places with limited Internet connectivity thanks to assistance from the Cook Inlet Tribal Council and the Anchorage Public Library in Alaska; HIVE Chattanooga, Chattanooga Public Library, the Creative Discovery Museum, and the Hunter Museum of American Art in Tennessee; the University of North Georgia and Mote Ed LLC in Dahlonega, Georgia; and other organizations.

Students explored the components of game design in the STEM Challenge workshop at the University of North Georgia’s (UNG) Dahlonega Campus.

• Our partnership with the EMP Museum in Seattle yielded two filled-to-capacity family workshops as part of their homeschool day programing. The workshops featured a tour of the Indie Game Revolution exhibit and a question-and-answer session with game design professionals from Her Interactive.
• Partnering with Black Girls Code’s New York Chapter provided an opportunity for over 60 girls to attend a STEM Challenge workshop hosted at Sesame Workshop in New York City. Attendees learned more about careers in game design, connected with local mentors, and acquired new technology skills.

A big smile on a workshop attendee as she rolled a perfect score during game testing!

3. Prioritize Online Resources

In addition to a robust workshop and event schedule, we directed more attention to our digital channels than ever before, sharing insights from previous winners, STEM Challenge partners, and industry leaders. You may have noticed new visual resources on our Instagram or video content on YouTube explaining the submission and judging process. Through our growing social channels—and with the help of our phenomenal summer intern Sloane Grinspoon—we were able to spread the word about #STEMChallenge16 with thousands of people around the world.

We shared tips, inspiration, and #STEMChallenge16 updates regularly on our social channels—including our new Instagram account!

Throughout the final months of the 5th annual National STEM Video Game Challenge, we’ll continue to share regular updates on our blog, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. We hope you’ll follow along and stay tuned to learn more about the 2016 winners and their games!

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Last month, the National STEM Video Game Challenge co-hosted a game design workshop with Black Girls CODE, a non-profit that leads coding and technology workshops for young women of color across the country. More than 50 girls  attended the workshop to learn the basics of game design, teaming up to create both physical and digital games over the course of the day. Check out highlights from the event in this brief video.

Caught a big smile from one of our attendees as she rolled a perfect score during game testing!

In the growing push to ensure early and ongoing exposure to STEM education for young people in the United States, Black Girls CODE is addressing the disproportionate underrepresentation of women and minorities in STEM head on. They work closely with dedicated volunteers from various STEM fields to send a clear message to the girls they mentor—dream big. At the joint workshop, volunteers encouraged attendees to think beyond stereotypical careers and tap into natural interests in science, technology, engineering, and math.

Attendees listened intently as volunteers shared how their work related to STEM learning.

During the 2016 Democratic National Convention, Michelle Obama spoke of the glass ceiling standing between women and the highest office in the United States for generations. For many, advancement as a woman and/or minority in STEM fields remains a challenge.

Two attendees shared what they learned in the workshop: cooperation and game design.

Silicon Valley is no exception, as evidenced by the disproportionately high rate of males hired for STEM jobs. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economics and Statistics Administration, women hold less than 25% of STEM jobs, despite the influx of college educated women into the workforce over the past decade. The numbers are stark for minority women. According to a study by the National Science Foundation, minority women comprise about 1 in 10 of currently employed scientists and engineers.

Many believe these disparities are due in part to the fact that fewer minority women come through the education pipeline with degrees relevant to STEM fields. While a myriad of factors may contribute to this phenomenon, it’s evident that encouraging young minority women to pursue STEM careers early on is of critical importance. Organizations like Black Girls CODE and the National STEM Video Game Challenge are hopeful that early exposure and support will leave young women more likely to develop an interest in STEM fields and pursue careers in the STEM realm.

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Imagine you were playing a game of Trivial Pursuit and this was your question: What institution has the largest collection of primary sources in the world, a board game on human morality, and now a video game expert?

Answer: The Library of Congress

Trivial Pursuit was just one of the games featured in our August 1, 2016 National STEM Video Game Challenge teacher workshop co-sponsored by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. In the event hosted at the Library of Congress, a group of DC-area teachers explored how to use games, primary sources, and game design structure in their classrooms.

The entryway to the Library of Congress in Washington, DC.

While games and game design education might seem out of place at the Library of Congress, the Library collects games through its Prints and Photographs Division. This division holds over 14 million prints, photographs, and paper media. Additionally, through the Library’s Moving Image collection, they have recently started collecting video games.

Drawing on these resources, workshop attendees had the opportunity to explore six games from the Prints and Photographs collection—ranging from an 1804 French gambling game to a 1988 political game and cartoon in which players race to the White House and citizen spectators are depicted eagerly waiting for the election-cycle dog and pony show to end.

A sampling of the historical games reviewed during the workshop.

Among the games showcased was an 1848 game called The Mansion of Happiness: An Instructive, Moral & Entertaining Amusement, one of the first commercial games in the United States (although Americans were playing parlor and physical games long before any games were formally being sold). Players race to the aforementioned Mansion of Happiness,  avoiding Vices and searching for Virtues. Vices lead to punishments, while Virtues bring game (and moral) rewards. The game rules contain thinly-veiled societal guidelines including:

“Rule 3. Whoever possess PIETY, HONESTY, TEMPERANCE, GRATITUDE, PRUDENCE, TRUTH, CHASTITY, SINCERITY, HUMILITY, INDUSTRY, CHARITY, HUMANITY, or GENEROSITY, is entitled to advance six towards the Mansion of Happiness.

Rule 4. Whoever possesses AUDACITY, CRUELTY, IMMODESTY, or INGRATITUDE, must return to his former situation till his turn comes to spin again, and not even think of Happiness, much less partake of it.”

Game board for Mansion of Happiness via Prints & Photographs Online Catalog.

By playing this game and moving towards The Mansion of Happiness, the game’s designers likely hoped that players would internalize these values, thereby learning the ethics of the time. Through play, rather than memorization, the game taught contemporary students.  While educational video games are now viewed as a strong teaching tool, the games explored used visual design and educational theming to get students excited about important content. In effect, The Mansion of Happiness might be one of the earliest examples of an American educational game.

Excited by this source material, the teachers began designing their own games—some educational, some recreational. One group of educators created a superhero-themed game that utilized the classroom to reward different recreational activities—including acting, darts, and design—while another created a board game based on Trivial Pursuit to help students memorize relevant course content. Employing what they had learned about integrating a game’s visual design and goals to motivate educational learning, another group incorporated physical activities to help students internalize physics content. Utilizing balls, cups, and the world around them, the designers hoped to motivate their students to explore their physical space and execute basic experiments. Having taught many STEM workshops over the past few months, I was thrilled to see the attendees utilize the integration between theme and goal to create strong games.

Attendees learning more about historical game design. Photo via the Library of Congress.

Of course, not all games are or should be educational. When we moved to designing video games, the conversation morphed from games as sources to using sources in our games. For example, one elementary school librarian inspired by her school’s pirate-themed book fair began creating a video game about “Book-aneers.” She used the game’s story to share facts about pirates and her visual design was evocative of a naval environment. By creating both physical and video games, teachers began to see games as teaching tools, as a medium for digital storytelling, and as part of a historic continuum.  Most excitingly, by putting teachers in the designer’s seat, the educators saw game creation as an additional curricular tool they could use to encourage and measure learning.

Lee Ann Potter, the Library of Congress’s Director of Educational Outreach and our partner in this joint workshop, encourages educators to use primary sources to help their students develop critical thinking around information and where it comes from. By integrating the Library’s vast digital collection of sources into classroom instruction and digital media design, Lee Ann believes both teachers and students can create games that are not only part of the historic design continuum, but are historic in their own right.

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Brooklyn Humphrey won the Best Middle School Unity game in the STEM Challenge last year. Here she shares her memories of what it was like to develop her first game, and what she is working on now.

Maze Kraze

I never would’ve thought that I would win the STEM Challenge. I didn’t even think that I would make a video game in the first place, but now I’ve learned that anything is possible. Here’s a glimpse of my experience making my first video game.

In 7th grade, I was learning how to program in a robotics class. During winter break, I decided to try making a video game with the Unity platform, so I started looking through the Unity site with my dad. A Roll-A-Ball tutorial gave me the inspiration for my game, Maze Kraze, where the player is a rolling ball that has to makes its way through a maze to collect coins, and ends up having to find the finish line after all of the coins are collected.  I knew that this wasn’t going to be the first maze game ever created, and since there wasn’t going to be a way to lose, I knew it wouldn’t be very difficult to play. However, this was my first game, so I just wanted to see what I was able to accomplish.

Once I actually started to build the maze, I began to think that it was really fun. With Unity, you have to write scripts for the different components of the game. This makes the game-making process a little more difficult than other platforms that require less coding, but this was the part I was actually really excited about. Coding a video game was definitely different from what I had learned in my robotics class, and certainly more difficult. I’m lucky to have a dad that actually programs for a living, so he helped me understand the code I had to write.

After about two weeks of hard work, I completed my game. It felt amazing to have made a video game. I showed my teachers and friends the game that I’d made over winter break. I got some pretty harsh criticism from my classmates, which obviously didn’t make me feel great. However, I wasn’t too upset about it, considering it was my first game. A few weeks later, my dad suggested that I enter my game in the STEM Challenge, which he had just learned about online.

Brooklyn guides a young player through her game

I was surprised to get a call a few months later telling me that I was a potential winner of the Middle School Unity category for the STEM Challenge. Shortly after that, we were in Pittsburgh, where all of the winners went to Schell Games to test out some of the games they were in the process of making. When I was there, I started to realize that game-making could potentially be a future career for me. We also went to WQED Studios, where we got to play each other’s games, were interviewed for the show “iQ Smartparent”, and accepted our awards.

I learned a couple of things through the process of making Maze Kraze. First, I learned that you shouldn’t go overboard with your first game. Starting out simple makes game design easier and a lot more fun. As you add more and more things to your game, the process can become very complicated, especially when it comes to coding. I’ve also learned that no matter what, your game is going to get criticized. Like I said, my classmates thought that my game could have been improved. However, when other people got to play it in Pittsburgh, I got plenty of positive feedback.

I decided to create another game for the STEM Challenge. However, I have some different goals to make this game a lot better than the first, so that I can hopefully win again. First of all, Maze Kraze was only one level, so my new game will have multiple levels. I also want there to be a way to lose, which will make the game a little more fun and challenging. Finally, I want to incorporate some small things that aren’t that noticeable, but that I feel would be more appreciated. For example, I want the player to be able to pause the game, I want to add cool particle systems, and overall, I want the game to have smooth transitions from screen to screen. I’m hoping that these changes will be enough to help me win again.

Winning the STEM Challenge was truly a wonderful experience. Being able to enjoy making a video game—and winning a national award for it—is something I never thought could happen. At first, I wasn’t even sure if I was going to be able to finish the game or enjoy making it. Now, I’m so glad that I did; I really enjoyed the process and the outcome. I’m definitely entering the Challenge again this year, and I encourage other middle and high school students who are interested to submit a game as well!

“Ugh! I hate coding!” cried out one of my seventh-grade students. “I don’t see why I have to move Elsa three spaces to meet Anna. It’s soooo boring!”

“But with Twine you are coding,” I explained.

“I guess,” she responded, unenthusiastically.

The above conversation was an actual exchange I had with a student in my social studies class this past school year. She was referencing an Hour of Code activity she was assigned to complete for another class. In it, students had to drag lines of code to instruct characters from Disney’s Frozen to move across the screen. To her, it was boring; coding meant solving rote puzzles. In my class, however, she was using Twine, an authoring tool, to code choose-your-own-adventure stories. It took some time for me to convince her that there are, in fact, multiple approaches to coding—beyond puzzles.

Beware of Loaded Words!

“Coding” is a loaded word. There are actually many words that are loaded for children, which can create a barrier to computer science education. “Computers,” “science,” and “games” are others. “Writing” is loaded, too—students who stated to me that they disliked writing actually wrote lengthy Twine stories.

As it turned out, the student that professed to “hate coding” turned in exemplar work. She and her partner authored a branched story about Paul Revere. Written in the second person point-of-view (“you”), the reader takes agency of the story’s narrative. It is not revealed to the reader who he or she actually is until the conclusion. To “win”—that is, to get the happy ending—the reader needs to make the same choices as those taken by Paul Revere during his famous midnight ride.

While the puzzle approach to teach coding engages some children, it does not interest all. Teachers should not look at the Hour of Code website as the Uber for 21st-century learning. It is a launch pad, not the destination. After the Hour of Code, students need freedom to bring their own interests to their STEM learning. Often times this involves self-expression driven by student choice.

Coding as Self-Expression

Writing interactive stories in Twine turned out to be an effective approach to show students that coding means more than directing characters to move across a screen. Easy to learn, I teach Twine by scaffolding instructions. I introduce it as a story-making machine. Then I show the class how to write a simple branch. Any text enclosed in a double square bracket automatically produces a hypertext on Twine, which, when clicked, brings the reader to another branch of the story. For example, “You see [[stairs]] and [[a door]]” creates two branches: one for “stairs” and one for “a door.” To the writer, it looks like a concept map, with arrows connecting to parts of the story:

Branches in Twine

Once students have their stories started, I add in more complex instructions. Actually, I show students the Twine Guide Wiki, which lets students self-direct their learning. If students want to add pictures, the guide has instructions to follow. Students can simply copy-and-paste one line of code, replacing placeholder text with a link to an image they find online. It was at this point when I proclaimed to the class that they were coding. That announcement was what led to the icy “I hate coding” response from my student. To her there had been a clear distinction between writing a story and coding one.

Similarly, I introduced Scratch, the free coding application, as a tool for self-expression. Last year, students were assigned to create viral videos about one of the original 13 American Colonies. They could use any application they wanted—on computer, iPad, or smartphone—as long as it was free. One team asked me if they could to remix Nyan Cat, a popular YouTube video animation viewed over 137 million times! I directed them to a Nyan Cat Simulator on Scratch, and then showed how they could remix the code. This turned out to be the first time they ever used a coding website. Using the See Inside feature, they added in facts about the Maryland colony. To them, Scratch became about self-expression using coding.

Students hacking code in Scratch

MIT Media Lab’s Mitchel Resnick, along with David Siegel wrote a blog post in 2015 about coding and self-expression. Resnick’s studio develops Scratch. They wrote, “For us, coding is not a set of technical skills but a new type of literacy and personal expression, valuable for everyone, much like learning to write. We see coding as a new way for people to organize, express, and share their ideas” (2015, para. 2).

Resnick and Siegel echo the sentiment from Seymour Papert, the father of constructionist learning. To Papert, coding was not about writing lines of code for a computer to interpret; rather, it was a tool set with which children could use to create a working system. He wrote, “a modern-day Montessori might propose, if convinced by my story, to create a gear set for children.” In this sense, coding applications should be used as digital toys to be played with by children.

For students to embrace coding, parents and teachers need to incorporate the multiple interests that children have. For some, coding can mean storytelling, pixel art, or actual lines of code. Children need to be free to bring their own passions and interests to coding projects. The result empowers students to take agency over their learning, driven by creativity.

Matthew Farber, Ed.D. teaches social studies at Valleyview Middle School, in Denville, New Jersey. He is an Edutopia blogger, and a Certified BrainPOP Educator. He is a Geraldine R. Dodge Teacher Fellow and a Woodrow Wilson HistoryQuest Fellow. He is the author of Gamify Your Classroom: A Field Guide to Game-Based Learning.

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I have been working with the brilliant minds in the video game and design industry since my introduction to the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) at Carnegie Mellon University in 2006.  While I am a scientist and tech savvy, I had no idea what the world of augmented reality, gaming, and videos could mean in the age before the iPad, especially to kids who are growing up immersed in the opportunity to not just consume games, but create them. We’ll get back to this in a moment.

At first, I worked with the ETC and the University of Pittsburgh’s UPCLOSE program to create a multiyear spy school for girls in STEM.  The program had an underlying theme of augmented reality to it (think a Facebook-like system that “fronts” communication much like Charlie’s phone did for Charlie’s Angels).  What was most striking about this gamified camp experience for middle school girls was the premise that they themselves were part of the game narrative.  They learned advanced concepts in genetics, environmental quality, and sustainability, and were introduced to coding, robotics, and technology design before the 9th grade.  With confidence brimming, the girls went into the next school year with a leg up in science.

Subsequently, I embraced the opportunity to work with the ETC, the International Game Design Association and Schell Games when the National STEM Video Game Challenge arrived on the scene.  We were fortunate enough to design a workshop and global game jam for students in the 5th – 8th grade.  The workshop was totally booked within a week.  In the workshop, led by WQED, we were focused on STEM games created for kindergarteners along with the PBS KIDS challenge.  We showcased digital and analog game design, as well as potential careers in STEM fields. It was so exciting to see two young men get so energized about creating their game that they recruited their neighbors.  Archers and Aliens, a National STEM Video Game Challenge winner,  was born.  Even more impressive, the boys continued to develop their game.  Their 1.0 version was about “addition” for kids in 1st grade, but they also moved on to 2.0, which was the “subtraction” module.  Let’s pause for a moment. These are middle school boys who have created a tool for 1st and 2nd grade students.  Kids teaching kids.  Peer to peer learning. Engagement.  Career opportunities. Imagination.

It was because of this deep relationship with the STEM Challenge that WQED went on to host the 2015 National Winners Event in Pittsburgh, then to film a TV episode for parents about how gaming can help unlock your child’s potential.

When this year’s STEM Challenge began, I knew that I wanted to help bring a workshop to the Glazer Children’s Museum in Tampa, where I am now the President and CEO.  Our workshop included regional educators throughout the K-12 spectrum, our community librarians, and kids from 5th to 8th grade

Photo: Glazer Children’s Museum

At the Glazer, we are not known for doing work with middle school students at all.  Actually, our survey confirmed that most of the workshop participants weren’t coming to our museum.  I anticipated this, as our local perception is that the museum is geared towards much younger children. What I didn’t expect was the parents.

Parents decided not to drop off their kids, but rather work with them for three hours on a Saturday afternoon. There were diverse races of parents with kids of varying ages, even some as young as my daughter (who is 9).  The parents were fully engaged with their kids.  They admitted to loving games, but they weren’t there to satisfy themselves, but rather to elevate their children.  They were modding, strategizing, and playing.  They legitimized what is so often marginalized: that games can teach and bring families together.  This is the highest role of any museum – to help our visitors (no matter how old), rise to their full potential because of something that sparked their imagination when they were with us.

Photo: Glazer Children’s Museum

Now, we’re even more excited to partner with the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and the  STEM Challenge team on initiatives for early learning and STEM, led by Michael Levine and Lisa Guernsey, both amazing advocates and forward-thinkers in the early childhood sector.  We are creating, together, a true set of critical thinkers, STEM-prepared and engaged like no other generation before them.  We are using games to invest in our kids’ fullest potential. If you haven’t yet, encourage YOUR child to enter the National STEM Video Game Challenge. By putting what they are imagining about a game onto paper, you give them the opportunity to “play” in the world, with their unique vision paving the way.

Jennifer Stancil is the President and CEO of the Glazer Children’s Museum in Tampa, Florida. Her first love is Atari; she and her family engage in lots of games for learning.
 

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Becoming Brilliant: What Science Tells Us About Raising Successful Children by Roberta Michnick Golinkoff, PhD and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, PhD

In their new book, Becoming Brilliant: What Science Tells Us About Raising Successful Children, Roberta Michnick Golinkoff and Kathy Hirsh-Pasek ask what it would “take to help all children be happy, healthy, thinking, caring, and sociable children who enjoy learning and who move toward becoming collaborative, creative, competent, and responsible citizens of tomorrow?” The answer they provide is tailored specifically to a 21st century global economy.

They offer a science-based framework, neatly packaged as “the 6Cs”—collaboration, communication, content, critical thinking, creativity, and confidence. These are “the key skills that will help all children become the thinkers and entrepreneurs of tomorrow.” They argue that these are the skills that kids need to become “contributing members of their communities and good citizens as they forge a fulfilling personal life.”

The 6Cs are as applicable to business as they are to education. In fact, Golinkoff and Hirsh-Pasek write, “for the first time in our memory, business leaders who think about their requirements for employees and child psychologists are talking the same language and looking for the same benchmarks.” The problem, they assert, is that “our school system seems to be stuck somewhere in the agrarian societies of past centuries.”

Since Golinkoff and Hirsh-Pasek are among the first people I always turn to when I need to ask the tough questions about learning science, I bought their new book immediately. After reading it, I had a few questions. Here is our conversation…

JORDAN: In the book, you write that “the 6Cs provide a suite of so-called hard and ‘soft-skills’ that can offer a profile of children’s competencies as they approach the society of tomorrow.” Of course, anyone who pays a lot of attention to education or early-childhood development is very familiar with this “hard” and “soft” polarization. It is a way of thinking about education that drives a lot of those annoying buzzwords and phrases, such as “character education” and “21^st Century skills.”

But it is sort of a false dichotomy, isn’t it? We always hear educators, reformers, and researchers talking about finding the balance between “hard skills” and “soft skills.” But it seems to me, from reading Becoming Brilliant, that the categories themselves may be more problematic than they are useful. It’s not really about balance, right? It sounds like these things are actually inseparable. Soft skills, you write, “are the bedrock for hard skills,” and “more predictive of academic success than are the hard skills.”

Can you say a bit about what the science tells us about why the soft/hard dichotomy is problematic? And also, explain how your 6Cs framework aims to help us move toward a more effective way of thinking about the skills our schools should be cultivating?

Roberta: It’s so unfortunate that the terms “hard” and “soft” skills have been used. We all have negative associations to the word “soft” – who wants to be good at something soft! But it turns out that so-called soft skills like “collaboration” are essential for life success. If you can’t “work and play well with others”- that item from our old report cards – you are not going to do well in the world. Consider how collaboration can complement your own skill set and make you and your work partner produce a better product. People are now collaborating over the internet with individuals they will never meet who are on the other side of the world. Collaboration means being able to take the perspective of another, to use your self-regulatory skills so you don’t blurt out, “Bad idea!” but work together to make it a better idea. Collaboration – whether it is in the classroom, on the soccer field, or in your marriage – is an essential life skill.

In fact, Collaboration is the first skill among the 6C’s. The next one is Communication which includes speaking and writing and that lost art of listening. Of course, it builds on collaboration because you need someone to communicate with! Then there is Content – still absolutely essential. Gladwell talks about the 10,000 rule – you need to know something really well before you can see how to make it better. That leads to Critical Thinking – we are being inundated with information. We need to help kids – and ourselves – learn to select what we need for the problem at hand. Creative Innovation builds on Critical Thinking. When you figure out what’s missing with Critical Thinking, you can create something that fills that gap! Finally, Confidence is really key. How many entrepreneurs and inventors failed the first 100 times? We have to help kids develop the ability to learn from their failures and not protect them from failing.

Kathy: Let’s take a very fundamental skill like reading. We have been drilling early reading in the form of phonics and letter-to-sound correspondence for a long time and there is good scientific evidence – even brain data—to support that approach. But translating letters into sounds in only part of the problem. Those sounds have to be recognizable words – words that you know, words that mean something when you read them. Otherwise, you might as well be learning Greek or Hebrew – what comes out at the other end is meaningless. So reading depends on having strong language skills. And language skills, getting that rich vocabulary in the first place, depends on social skills – that back and forth conversation that we call – singing a conversational duet. So, when you look carefully at even something as basic as reading – you come to realize that these standard academic skills (Content) rest on a foundation of Collaboration and Communication or what some have called soft skills. Soft skills are not soft at all! In my work with the Brookings Institution, we have decided to abandon the term soft skills in favor of thinking about a breadth of skills – some social, some creative, some communicative. The 6Cs is one framework for thinking through that breadth.

JORDAN: I think it is important to emphasize how much we now know “about the role of interpersonal relationships and social acumen in young children and adults.” No doubt this is why you emphasize collaboration and communication among your 6Cs. But when I think about the parents and teachers that I talk to regularly, I’m not entirely sure that most of them get how much science actually knows about how these skills develop.

Can you explain, in simple terms, how kids go from everyday play to developing the sort of sophisticated collaboration and communication skills that will be so important to success in a 21^st Century global economy? Can you break down the basics: what’s Executive Function? How does play foster Self-Regulation? And aren’t these precisely the competencies that will eventually lead to strong critical thinking skills?

Kathy: The study of emotion regulation and executive function includes some really key abilities like learning to control your impulses (‘Don’t push Johnny off the swing – wait your turn’) or being a flexible rather than a rigid thinker (‘Hmm—I there is more than one way to build a mousetrap’) and an attentive student in and out of school. A number of scientists are looking seriously at these skills and the more we look, the more we see how mastery of emotion regulation and executive function are not only important for navigating the social world (‘If you push Johnny, he won’t be your friend’), but also a key indicator for how well you will do in school (in reading and math scores on standard tests). Some have termed executive function skills learning-to-learn skills and the evidence suggests that they can be taught. Researchers like Deborah Leong have developed school-based programs like Tools of the Mind which use play throughout the school day to help children attend and control their impulses (e.g., you take the ear and be the listener while Olivia takes the mouth and is the speaker. Then you can switch roles). Simple group clapping games also force us to pay attention to one another and to control the impulses to be out of synch. As with the Tools program, mastery of playful learning games helps children develop these learning to learn skills and boosts later academic and social outcomes for children.

Roberta: Parents and other adults help kids develop these important skills when they give kids strategies for self-control and help them understand the consequences of their behavior. When Sally bops Cynthia with her truck, parents who say things like, “Oh how would you feel if Cynthia did that to you?” get kids to think about what they did. Just punishing without discussion doesn’t help kids develop the self-regulation they need to succeed in the world. When you tell a child that “Mommy is busy; can you color for a little while and then I will play with you?” you help children learn to control their desire to have mom’s attention NOW. Now this might take a few hundred times but it’s worth it! Kids who are prompted to think about their behavior are better behaved in the long term than those who are just punished.

JORDAN: You write that “the great jobs in Fortune 500 companies, now and in the future, are likely to go to people who have thinking skills that cannot be taught through memorization.” But ironically, as the learning industry becomes more homogenized and increasingly controlled by fewer and fewer big corporate content and curriculum creators, our school reform efforts seem to fortify an even narrower focus on rote learning. These corporations seem to be working against their own best interest; they are not creating the very employees they’d presumably need to thrive in the future.

In the book, you say it better than I can, explaining why this is problematic: “Robots can memorize the facts, but only children have the potential to socialize, be good citizens, think and create.” There’s sort of an implicit economic imperative in that statement, a hint about automation and human production. Especially in an internet era when the entire library has been smooshed into a device that can fit in your pocket, the skills you frame in these 6Cs are key.

But this also isn’t really a profound earth shattering realization. I feel like anyone I’ve ever talked to—educators, parents, politicians, even the people who write the standardized tests—would agree that, as you say, “the true winners of the next generation will be those who can sift through mountains of information and cull just what they need.” So there’s a kind of post-industrial-era paradigm problem here. We may want to account for learning outcomes with the same kind of determinate metrics that drive the corporate sector, but clearly that will eventually just cannibalize the economy. Worse still, it won’t create fulfilled individuals. As you say, “society thrives when we craft environments, in and out of school, that support happy, healthy, thinking caring, and social children citizens tomorrow.”

Can you explain how we could use the 6Cs framework as a more holistic way to measure learning outcomes? Couldn’t it actually create even more, perhaps even better, accountability?

Roberta: Great question Jordan. We talk about Mr. Straight-A in the book who was pretty much guaranteed a job upon finishing school. But no more. Without the other C’s you might not get that job. Even in Silicon Valley, where jobs are still abundant, recruiters have said that social skills like Collaboration and Communication are essential for landing that job. And you are right: the paradigm is shifting but the schools are not. This is one of the reasons we wrote the book. Kids spend only 20% of their waking time in school. We have got to start attending to the other 80% when parents and caregivers can offer children fun ways to learn the 6C’s that the school might be ignoring. Now some schools are great – we want ALL kids to have a Sidwell Friends education like the Obama girls. But some are not helping children learn the breadth of skills they will need to make it in this new ever-changing world. Two business professors at MIT talk about “Race Against the Machine” as so many of our jobs will be taken by computers and robots. Our kids need to cultivate those skills that computers are not good at!

Kathy: Thanks for this question. Indeed, we have a school system that is largely out of touch with the current realities of the global workforce and its demands. Several years ago, a Time Magazine story suggested that if Rip Van Winkle woke up today, the school would be the only familiar institution in the society. In our rush to prepare the next generation for the workforce, we have ironically turned to overtesting on facts that modern day computers can retrieve much faster than we can. We are thus not preparing our children for the present let alone the future.

Our book takes a step back and tries to realign the way we think about learning and education by revisiting a basic question – what counts as success in a modern, global society? If success is defined by how well we do as a population in math and reading bubble tests – then we should indeed have a school system that only teaches narrowly construed math and reading (I will add, however, that this strategy has been fairly ineffective as we know from 15 years of No Child Left Behind). If success is to be defined instead as grooming social, caring, thinkers and creators who will be responsible citizens, then we have to ask what we should include in our educational systems and extracurricular activities to foster those outcomes. The problem is not with accountability or measurement per se – it is with what we want to measure and how we should measure it. I am all for using and discovering measuring tools that ask if children are becoming less impulsive critical thinkers and problem solvers. Such tools would not only prepare them for a different type of success, but would also help parents and teachers learn to evaluate growth in these areas. With these measurement tools in hand, we also need to ask what experiences young children need to have at home, in schools and in communities to foster these outcomes.

The 6Cs provides us with an evidence based way to rethink what counts as success – to recognize that it is more than our score on a narrowly construed test. One we broaden our view of what we need to master, we can engineer opportunities for growing these skills. We can also use the 6Cs as guide to a dynamic learning model that is as relevant for schools as it is for the future workplace – and as relevant for children as it is for adults.

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