Tag Archives: video games

Hello everyone! My name is Marty Esterman and I am the Educator Grand Prize winner for the PBS Kids stream in this year’s STEM Video Game Challenge event for my entry, AdditionBlocks. I have been quite humbled by this whole experience-and I want to thank The Joan Ganz Cooney Center, PBS Kids, E-Line Media, and the AMD Foundation for all their support. I have met some really great people! I also want to thank my wife, Stacy, who has also been…

Dr. Idit Harel Caperton, President and Founder of the World Wide Workshop, is passionate about getting more young girls and women excited about becoming leaders in STEM-related fields.This piece originally appeared in the Huffington Post and is reprinted here with permission. This is the second of two posts about integrating more women in the gaming industry: read the first post here. In this piece, she focuses on how to get girls and young women the support they need to dive into…

This year’s National STEM Video Game Challenge was a record-breaking event for the Cooney Center and our partners at E-Line Media. With more categories and subcategories than ever before, we counted more than 3,700 entries from middle and high school students and nearly 100 within the adult categories from all over the country. The student winners—28 from 11 states and the District of Columbia—were honored at the Celebration for Success at the Smithsonian American Art Museum last Monday. The youth winners will…

An adventure game where your character moves around by manipulating the attractive and repulsive forces of the atom. A 3D battle against pathogens inside the human body. An early learning game starring a shark that teaches first graders about inequalities. They could be the latest releases from a premiere educational game studio, but these and 14 other incredible games were all made by students between the ages of 10 and 18: the winners of the 2012 National STEM Video Game Challenge Youth Prize. On Monday, May…

Allison Mishkin teaches at a game design camp for middle school students. Here she shares some of the lessons that she’s learned — and tries to impart — to her students during this week-long sessions.   A group of students stumble into a computer lab on a bright spring day, unsure why their parents wanted them out of the house on their vacations. By the end of the day, they would emerge optimistic and excited for the week to come.…

This op-ed was originally published in the Boston Globe’s “The Podium” on September 25, 2011.   For decades, America’s educational leadership has been the envy of the world. But now, in the face of globalization and economic realignment, adaptation and innovation are urgently needed. Retooling our education engine to produce better outcomes will drive our ability to compete in a complex, networked world powered by technology and efficiency. Transitioning to the digital age will define our children’s future career prospects…

One of the perks of working with The Cooney Center and Sesame Workshop is getting to meet people doing amazing things.  The industry is full of passionate organizations and individuals that are using digital media to promote children’s healthy development and learning in a multitude of ways I never would have dreamed of.  As part of my blog series, I hope to occasionally spotlight these organizations — groups that are doing something different, something amazing, or something inspiring.  It wasn’t…

Al Gore doesn’t know THAT much about video games but who cares? He’s Al Gore, and he believes enough in their potential to have given the keynote speech today at the 8th Annual Games for Change conference at NYU where he pronounced, “Games are the new normal.” Gore is a warm and generous speaker and he gave plenty of credit where it was due, in particular to Bing Gordon, a partner at investment firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, as…

As an intern at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, I was fortunate enough to attend the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) held on June 7-9. I was also able to partake in the 2nd annual Games and Learning Summit on the morning of June 7th, where a few dozen electronic industry leaders, top White House officials, philanthropic leaders from the Gates and MacArthur Foundations and academic experts such as James Paul Gee discussed the important role of game-based education in the…

In January, I attended a workshop dedicated to games, assessment and learning hosted by the MacArthur and Gates Foundations and the USC Game Innovation Lab. The workshop brought together game designers, educators, and researchers to work together on designing games around various curricula topics that would be engaging, educational, and contain features to allow for the collection and feedback about how players were faring when engaged in the game. The conversation went beyond what players could learn from games: We…