Tag Archives: game design

Personally, I believe in general, when you look at the new assessments, you look at the new standards, you look at what employers want, you look at what people really need to thrive, they tend to align well with inquiry-based learning, blended learning. … But the fact is it’s really hard to design, develop, implement and support those types of learnings. I believe the people who can do that are going to experience enormous success. – Alan Gershenfeld, president and…

In England at the turn of the last century, a young man named Jacob (whose last name is not known) was on his way to a society event dressed in his finest attire and carrying only his umbrella in case of rain. Naturally, his journey was beset with obstacles. A barrier placed in the middle of the street (by a misguided commissioner, perhaps) that could only be escalated by climbing a delivery crate. Rain clouds hanging low like giant parade…

  The photo above was taken last night at NYU’s Skirball Center at the 11th Annual Games for Change Festival Awards Ceremony as these fourteen young people from all over the country were being honored for their achievements as winners of the 2013 National STEM Video Game Challenge. Gaming has touched the current generation of learners in a new way. The 2013 National STEM Video Game Design Challenge challenged enthusiastic students around the country to look under the hood of…

The Games for Change Festival starts bright and early tomorrow morning in New York City, where game designers, investors, journalists, and researchers will gather for a four-day investigation of the current state of serious gaming. The Joan Ganz Cooney Center will be there, hoping to engage with a community who we believe possesses a cultural connection to the young learners of today. Earlier this month, another game-focused meeting of minds took place in New York, albeit in a more intimate setting and…

This year, I had the great privilege to attend the Digital Media and Learning Conference in Boston, Massachusetts, where I had organized a panel called “Creating Youth Builders – Promoting a New Game Design Ecosystem to Engage Hard-to-Reach Youth in Learning.” The heavy hitters on the panel included Jennifer Groff, a graduate researcher at the MIT Media Lab and the VP of Learning for the Learning Games Network, Ricarose Roque, a PhD student with the Scratch Team at the MIT…

This year, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center will be a part of not just one, but two sessions at the Digital Media and Learning Conference, an annual event supported by the MacArthur Foundation and organized by the Digital Media and Learning Research Hub. The conference, which takes place March 6-8th, 2014 in Boston, brings together scholars and practitioners who aim to foster interdisciplinary and participatory dialog while linking theory, empirical study, policy, and practice. This year is focused on the…

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!…

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…

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…

The Joan Ganz Cooney Center and E-Line Media are thrilled to announce the winners of the 2013 National STEM Video Game Challenge. This year, we received close to 4,000 entries — and not only did more students enter the competition than in previous years, but their games were more complex, challenging and creative than ever before. We were blown away by the energy that students put into their games, the number of platforms they used to develop them (over 15!)…