Tag Archives: youth

As a graduate student studying games for learning, and a general geek extraordinaire, I’ve been given the unique opportunity this summer to teach a new online program for kids who want to learn how to design video games. E-Line Media, a Cooney Center partner in the National STEM Video Game Challenge, and the creator of the game-building platform Gamestar Mechanic, has designed an engaging curriculum that teaches kids not only how to make their own games, but also what it is that game…

Hello again! When I wrote my blog post on my experiences as one of the Educator Winners from the 2012 STEM Video Game Challenge, I didn’t have a chance to discuss my method for designing games for students. I’ve thought about this quite a bit, and wanted to share some of my tips with other aspiring game designers here. First, there are two good articles on video games and learning at the STEM Challenge website at the bottom of their Resources page. These…

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…

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…

While managing the @cooneycenter Twitter feed and live blog during this week’s Learning From Hollywood Forum, my mental gears were continuously whirring.  Rich threads of conversation spun back and forth online and in face-to-face conversation, through the #cooneyforum hashtag and the generous physical space provided by the USC School of Cinematic Arts (even the terrific film soundstages where lunch was held!) During the coming weeks, I’ll be working with the Michael Levine and Rebecca Herr-Stephensen from the Joan Ganz Cooney…

The art and science of storytelling has been at the heart of all good education from the beginning of the humanity. Since before technology, before media, before printing or even writing, education was passed from generation to generation through storytelling. The stories told around the fire before written histories may have had elements of myth and legend and exaggerated truth in them, but they all served the same purpose: the enculturation of the young and the drawing together of the…

  This post originally appeared on the Breakthrough Learning in a Digital Age blog.   Tashawna is a high school senior in Brooklyn, NY. In the morning she leaves home for school listening to her MP3s, texting her friends about meeting up after school at Global Kids, where she participates in a theater program, or FIERCE, the community center for LGBT youth. On the weekend she’ll go to church and, on any given day, visit MySpace and Facebook as often…