By Sara Vogel This summer, youth channeled the stories of yet another set of New York City "ghosts" through our signature NYC Haunts program -- this time, at New Directions Secondary School in the Bronx. A multi-age, diverse group of elementary, middle, and high schoolers, along with adult educators collaborated to create a location-based game about local South Bronx history and issues using MIT's TaleBlazer software. Everyone rose to the challenge to complete the project in just one week. After playing some example games and learning the elements of a game, game designers got right to work, listening intently to the stories of Global Kids staff member and former HS basketball player, Devin, who attended school on their campus a few years ago. They also conducted research about the history of the area through internet searches, community walks, and interviews with local residents. The students found out that the Bronx was plagued by arson in the 1970s, and it destroyed many homes. They learned about the efforts of young people to rebuild the community in the wake of the destruction. In the end, the winning game concept involved many of the researched elements: The player is Devin, a high school basketball star who is zapped back in time to the 1970s. Only a pair of magical Jordans can help him return to the year 2009 in order to play in the basketball championship. To find the shoes, he must help neighborhood people locate the items they need to rebuild the community after an arson. Once the group settled on a core idea, youth split up into four teams to divide up the work. The art team created images for the characters and items. The storytelling team wrote and reviewed the text of each character. The investigator team determined the clues and riddles to give to the player within the game. The coding team figured out the logic of the game and programmed it. Everyone's hard work paid off. Give the game it a playtest the next time you are around 170th St and the Grand Concourse. It can be found if you download the TaleBlazer app and insert the code: gbosehd Happy time travelling! Archives July 2015
0 Comments
By Pia OLP at Global Kids is getting ready to kick off this year’s Summer NYC Haunts program at two participating middle school camps. We are excited for GK's young people to explore NYC's history through the creation of location-based games that take players on treks through two vibrant neighborhoods, Washington Heights and the South Bronx. The participating youth might choose to explore Native American history in the northern part of NYC, tales from the immigrants that have arrived in their neighborhoods from countries around the world, or any number of other local stories. We are excited to see what the students will come up with. Recent play-tests during their after school programs showed us they are ready to dive in! Here are some photos: Get ready for a haunted summer! 😎 By Sara Vogel Seventh and eighth graders at Global Neighborhood Secondary School reached a key mid-year milestone before the December break: they completed their very first location-based games using the tool, TaleBlazer. Students collaborated in small groups to plan out and code the games, and to draw, photograph, and use image-editing software to create the art for the game. They also worked together to write their games’ stories. Students from the art elective joined the group for indoor and outdoor playtests, and provided valuable feedback for the youth game designers. The focus project that students have been working on in 2015 is a location-based game featuring “ghosts” from El Barrio’s past. To prepare students to brainstorm the game’s location, characters, story and mechanics, we visited spots around the neighborhood, interviewing local residents and taking video and photographs. Students practiced their interview and camera skills in the classroom... ...and then put them to work out in the field. Here, one group interviews Nikki, who works for a bakery and job-training non-profit in La Marqueta. They also explored the neighborhood’s history through the completion of an El Barrio history timeline, and through examining old photographs. All of this background research culminated in students imagining characters that could have lived in the neighborhood over the last century, including Italian, Puerto Rican and Dominican immigrants.
One group decided to create a location-based game about an Italian immigrant, set in East Harlem during the 1920s Prohibition Era. One group decided to set their location-based game in present-day East Harlem. That game is about a Dominican immigrant who has recently arrived in New York, and must complete "missions" to get settled in the neighborhood. Looking forward to the finished projects, set to roll out in June! By Sara Vogel Last week, Global Kids celebrated the addition of two new youth-created geolocative games to our NYC Haunts portfolio, capping off a busy summer. At The Point Community Development Corporation, participants in the Summer Youth Employment Program created a moving, emotional game that honors the African-American and Native American slaves that were buried hundreds of years ago in what is now Drake Park. Youth were motivated to take action through the creation of a game for change, when they observed that white land and slave owners were recognized with well-manicured and marked plots in the park, while the remains of slaves were scattered throughout the park in unmarked graves. In the game, the player must learn and remember the stories of several slave-ghosts in order to reunite them with important objects. In doing so, the player recognizes these individuals' memories and roles in history: In an alternate pathway, a player must guide a young escaping slave to a safehouse, following clues in the environment, as slaves would have done following the Underground Railroad in the past.
By Alora Cholette This summer, Global Kids is teaming up with three Hive Learning Network partners around New York City to run Global Kids' signature location-based game program, NYC Haunts. As we serve diverse populations and adjust to new settings, we are also stretching, growing, and adapting our curriculum to prepare for a roll-out of the program across multiple Global Kids school sites in the Fall. The first stop was Exposure Camp, a program that guides teenagers from the Mt. Vernon and north Bronx areas to create and program their own digital content. Alora Cholette, an Adelphi University Community Fellow working with GK OLP for the summer, provides her reflections from the field: Efficiency was the name of the game at Exposure Camp. Students were faced with the challenge of designing a location-based game in just one week! Boy did they step up to the task. Taking inspiration from their own experiences and those of local idols, the students created a game about a young boy named Patrick. Newly arrived to Mt. Vernon, Patrick is afraid to explore the area because of rumors he's heard about its reputation. However, he has dreams of becoming a famous rapper, which aren't going anywhere with him stuck inside. Suddenly, the ghost of Mt. Vernon hip hop artist, Heavy D, appears and sends Patrick on a journey to get to the local festival Arts on 3rd. On the way, Patrick has to help other Mt. Vernon celebrities in order to collect Heavy D's song lyrics, which talk about the pride the rapper has in his neighborhood. In order to make the game, the students kept up an energetic pace for 5 days of intensive game design. We started by brainstorming basic elements, which developed into interesting in-depth conversations about how perceptions from outside can effect how we see ourselves from within a culture. Specific topics came up as we explored the neighborhood and researched its history. The students wanted to focus on how a game could be used to improve their surroundings. Once the idea of local entertainers and artists became our focus, we moved on to testing paper prototypes, and coding the final product. Creativity was in the air and their level of engagement within the tight timeframe was impressive and a joy to be a part of! Special thanks to the Hive Learning Network, Exposure Camp, the New York Community Trust, and the New York Public Library for their support of this project.
By Sara Vogel This weekend, 16 students from 5 programs represented Global Kids at Hive's annual Emoti-Con youth digital media challenge! Participants in GK's NYC Haunts program from the School for Human Rights and the High School for Global Citizenship showed off the location-based games they had made about local and global social issues. Playing for Keeps students from the Citywide program and at Global Neighborhood Secondary School presented games for change they had made using Scratch and Gamestar Mechanic. All of our students -- whether they came to present or just to be attentive, curious audience members -- truly shined. Special shout out to Payton (a 6th grader) and Keron (an 8th grader) from School for Human Rights who impressed the judges with their presentations about the location-based game they made with their peers about gun violence, Keep Wingate Safe. They placed in the top 5 and stood on stage in front of over 200 people to talk about their work! They took away badges for Point of View and Most Social Impact. We would like to thank all of the Global Kids trainers, the NYC Hive Learning Network, the Emoti-Con Steering Committee, and the judges, and keynotes who made this day possible.
By Sara Vogel You don't need a time machine to experience the past. That's what students at the High School for Global Citizenship and the School for Human Rights found out this semester as they created their own location-based games for GPS devices that drew on local history and made connections to larger global issues, such as protection of the right to equality before the law, as stated in Article 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Stroll down to the housing complex across the street from Jackie Robinson School in Crown Heights with your cell phone or tablet and load up the TaleBlazer app. By playing the student-produced game, you'll learn that if you were at that spot five decades ago, you would have seen Ebbet's Field-- the Brooklyn Dodgers home baseball field where Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball. Playing as Jackie Robinson, you'll be faced with racist, dehumanizing situations as you visit all four bases of the baseball diamond and attempt to score a home run. You must make decisions in character. As is noted in the game, Jackie Robinson is just one of many who faced discrimination on the basis of race over the years. Article 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights protects people around the world from such unlawful treatment by ensuring that "all are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law." On the day of the final playtest, student game-designers presented their game in front of their peers and staff from Global Kids and the Brooklyn Public Library. They discussed game play, the game design process, and some of the challenges they faced in designing the game. Then everyone set out on a trek around the site to experience the game as players would. We want to let people know about the stories of gun violence in the past and show them some of the locations that the shootings took place. We are interested in gun violence because we don’t feel safe in our community and we want others to know what steps they should take to feel safe if they have the same problem. When people finish playing our game we do not want them to be sad, we want them to feel hopeful that they can do something about gun violence even if it’s just a little step they take. As at HSGC, student game-designers at SHR first presented their game to their peers, as well as high schoolers from Global Kids' program, their school's principal, and their social studies teacher. They also supported their principal Arianna said she was most proud of the playtest part of the process "because I got to show the game to my friends and teachers." At Global Kids, we are gearing up for the summer when youth affiliated with NYC Hive Learning Network organizations around the city will produce three new geo-locative games about the issues and stories they care about. Stay tuned! By Sara Vogel You don't need a time machine to experience the past. That's what students at the High School for Global Citizenship and the School for Human Rights found out this semester as they created their own location-based games for GPS devices that drew on local history and made connections to larger global issues, such as protection of the right to equality before the law, as stated in Article 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Stroll down to the housing complex across the street from Jackie Robinson School in Crown Heights with your cell phone or tablet and load up the TaleBlazer app. By playing the student-produced game, you'll learn that if you were at that spot five decades ago, you would have seen Ebbet's Field-- the Brooklyn Dodgers home baseball field where Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball. Playing as Jackie Robinson, you'll be faced with racist, dehumanizing situations as you visit all four bases of the baseball diamond and attempt to score a home run. You must make decisions in character. As is noted in the game, Jackie Robinson is just one of many who faced discrimination on the basis of race over the years. Article 7 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights protects people around the world from such unlawful treatment by ensuring that "all are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law." On the day of the final playtest, student game-designers presented their game in front of their peers and staff from Global Kids and the Brooklyn Public Library. They discussed game play, the game design process, and some of the challenges they faced in designing the game.
By Sara Vogel What would Jackie Robinson say to the people who currently live on site of the field where he broke the color line in major league baseball? How did a Queens mobster contribute to the history of Long Island City? How did people react to shootings that happened in Wingate Park in 1997? These are just some of the questions being pondered by youth game designers at the School for Human Rights, Long Island City High School and the High School for Global Citizenship as Global Kids' NYC Haunts program kicks into high gear. At HSGC, students have decided to situate their geo-locative game on the site of what was Ebbet's Field, where the famous Brooklyn Dodgers played baseball decades ago. Students are channelling the "spirits" of the players who supported and those who were reluctant to support Jackie Robinson as he became the first African-American to play on a major league team. They have been making decisions about their game's structure, determining that players will walk around the site, collecting virtual baseball cards each time they make key decisions related to Jackie Robinson's experiences. They are also using the "land mines" functionality of the TaleBlazer program to insert what they are calling "trap cards," random agents that will attempt to steal pre-earned cards.
First, participants brainstormed topics and ideas for their games: After picking a topic, they did some research with educators from the Brooklyn Public Library to collect stories and ideas. Inspired by the articles, their own experiences and perspectives, they created characters and created a trajectory around the playground for the player to navigate. Most recently, they used a paper prototype to showcase and refine their ideas. With just a few weeks left to the school year, students will be finishing up their prototypes and will start coding and playtesting their games. We are excited to share them with our communities!
By Sara Vogel What stories does your neighborhood have to tell? Global Kids is excited to announce that NYC Haunts -- our signature program where youth create a mobile, augmented reality game exploring local history and contemporary issues -- is blasting out to three Global Kids schools this Spring! In a pilot project supported by the Hive Learning Network NYC and the New York Community Trust, students at the School for Human Rights in Brooklyn, the High School for Global Citizenship, and Long Island City High School are creating geo-locative games and helping GK educators experiment with and stretch the NYC Haunts curriculum in advance of a roll out at several Global Kids schools next Fall. Hive partner organizations the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Exposure Camp, and The Point will also host Haunts pilots this Summer. In addition to iterating on past versions of the program conducted in collaboration with the New York and Brooklyn Public Libraries, this year's pilot will test out a new augmented-reality game design engine, TaleBlazer, currently being developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Researchers and software developers at MIT are closely supporting the program to help Global Kids learn all of the features of the program and help measure student learning outcomes. The games, which will follow the footsteps of a ghost detective, will engage both game designers and players. Designers create a digital trek through a neighborhood, dropping in clues such as audio clips, videos, and photos, to help solve the mystery and uncover the neighborhood’s history. Youth research the ghost’s story, the social, environmental, or economic conditions in the city that might have caused its demise, and imagine the steps players can take to help the ghost move on and cease its haunting. In the process, youth learn to research and curate content to help other youth understand the plight of the ghost, explore contemporary issues or a particular moment in neighborhood history and develop their digital media, critical thinking, and communications skills. We'd also love to share a poem written by Angel (pictured above) after playing a first example location-based game with our NYC Haunts program this January. Enjoy Today was another average day at GK. |
GK Digital Learning and Leadership BlogCheck back in to find out what projects our DLL team is working on with Global Kids students! Archived Blog Categories
All
|