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!
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By Sara Vogel A new report out this week from the National Summer Learning Association features the work and reflections of Global Kids' two teaching fellows, Andrew Adler and Scott Neagle, who came on board as part of a partnership with NSLA this past summer. The NYC Dept. of Ed teachers became part of our team, co-facilitating and co-planning NYC Haunts and Playing for Keeps workshops in order to learn GK OLP's best practices for guiding youth through connected learning experiences -- practices they will take back to their school communities. In the report, Adler and Neagle share their take-aways about working with youth in non-classroom environments, the new digital tools they explored, and the importance of educators taking on the role of "life-long learners." Also showcased is a video conversation with Ben, a student who took part in Playing for Keeps, who when asked what he learned about himself during the game design program, said, "that I'm good at it."
Thanks to the MacArthur Foundation for their support of this worthwhile partnership with NSLA! 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. By Sara Vogel As 2013 wound down, students at Global Neighborhood Secondary School in GK's Playing for Keeps program were anything but checked out for the holidays. They had spent weeks developing, prototyping, playtesting, and iterating video games using the platform Gamestar Mechanic, and were ready to show off the fruits of their labor. Overcoming their nerves and shyness, sixth, seventh, and eighth graders stood up in front of an audience of their classmates and teachers to speak about the elements of their games (space, rules, goals, components, and mechanics) and the process taken to complete them. Other students got a chance to playtest the games that P4Kers spent a good deal of time developing. As we slide into January, students at GNSS have already started to learn the platform Scratch, which they will use to make Games for Change about social issues that are important to them. Looking forward to Emoti-Con!
By Sara Vogel Since 2002, youth have worked with Global Kids staff and game designers to develop games that address global social issues. This year, we're broadening the reach of our signature Playing for Keeps program, as we partner with the Department of Education's Digital Ready initiative to use social impact game design to equip students at collaborating schools with the digital literacy and communication skills they need for college and careers. Students from three Digital Ready high schools -- Satellite Academy, Hudson High School for Learning Technologies, and Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School -- attend weekly workshops where they put game design vocabulary and concepts into practice using tools such as Gamestar Mechanic and Scratch. Students also conduct research on a topic they care about. As they create their games about global social issues, youth integrate STEM concepts they learn in the classroom into the iterative design process, learn to work as part of a team, and facilitate their own workshops. As part of the initiative, Global Kids is working with educators at the three schools to align Playing for Keeps curriculum to state learning standards; possibly allowing the 15 participating students to receive academic credit for creating their games and teaching others about game design back at their schools and at other venues.
By Sara Vogel This Fall, dozens of middle and high schoolers are transforming into game designers as Global Kids' signature program, Playing for Keeps, ramps up at schools around the city and at GK headquarters.
Students at the School for Human Rights in Flatbush, Global Neighborhood Secondary School in East Harlem, and I.S. 109 in East Flatbush have been taking a deep dive into the core elements of a game -- creating their own games from found objects, hacking classics like Tic-Tac-Toe and Rock Paper Scissors, and designing, iterating and playtesting levels on Gamestar Mechanic software. As part of a Department of Education initiative, Global Kids is working with educators at four "Digital Ready" high schools -- Satellite Academy, Hudson High School for Learning Technologies, Academy of Innovative Technologies, and Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School -- to align Citywide P4K curriculum to state learning standards; possibly allowing the 19 participating students to receive academic credit for creating serious games about global issues and facilitating workshops on game design back at their schools and at other venues. Next steps for these students include creating game design documents to outline how they will integrate a global issue into the core elements of their games. Check out the photos below for the highlights! By Sara Vogel This weekend, two intrepid students from Global Kids' In School Youth program took the long subway ride out from the International Arts Business School at the Wingate campus in Flatbush to the New York Hall of Science in Queens to participate in the annual Maker Faire. They marveled at extravagant Lego creations and robots of all shapes and functions, checked out the life-sized mouse trap and the boxcar derby, and drank fruit smoothies. They also engaged those passing through NYC Hive's section of the Young Makers tent in interactive "choose your own adventure" storytelling using the platform Twine. Clayderman and Deion began the story: You wake up on a beach by your home. You see some driftwood and a metal bat. Which do you choose to pick up, the metal bat or the driftwood? From there, each Maker Faire attendee who stopped by added a passage and a link or two to the story. By the end of the day, the tale included playing softball with coconuts, talking fish, and snapping turtles. Check it out here. Be prepared: it is very much a rough cut and there are some broken links -- none of the Makers at the event wanted to end the story! Thanks to Hive for inviting us to take part!
By Juan Rubio At the Global Kids headquarters this past Saturday September 14th, a group of kids from different parts of New York City and different ages gathered to take part in the littleBits Global Makeathon 2013. According to the littleBits webiste, the Global Makeathon was "the world's largest physical and virtual littleBits workshop. We are bringing together makers from around the world for one day to bring their own cities to life. Join us, with your Bits, your crafts, and your tools and Make Something that Does Something!"
Young kids who came to take part on the challenge started the day talking about the things they enjoyed the most about living in New York City. The theme of the makeathon was "Bring Your City to Life" and the kids were excited to start thinking about how they could represent their city in the challenge. After introductions from Ayah Bdeir to the challenge and a google hangout with makers from all around the world, the kids learned the basics of using little bits: that the color blue was for the power bits, pink for input, orange for wire, and green for output. By Sara Vogel For ten weeks, Global Kids is hosting intern Ebba Minas, an 18-year-old from Stockholm, Sweden on a gap year between secondary school and university. She had the opportunity to participate in That Could Be Your Sister, last week's event co-hosted with Radio Rookies, during which youth designed digital tools to combat sexual cyberbullying. Below, read her impressions of the event and her comparisons between conversations around "slut-shaming" in the US and Sweden.
By Sara Vogel Twenty-five youth from around New York City. A problem to solve through the design of a digital tool. Cash prizes at stake. That was the set up for yesterday's That Could Be Your Sister Design Challenge, held at the Brooklyn Public Library by Global Kids and WNYC's Radio Rookies. The youth – many of them affiliated withBPL's T4 program and several from GK and Rookies – listened intently as 17-year-old Temitayo Fagbenle played a radio story that she had reported last year about "slut-shaming" on online social networks, or as she and producer Courtney Stein wrote, "using photos and videos to turn a girl's private life inside out." She challenged the group to propose an idea for a digital tool that could be mobilized to support victims, raise awareness or collect data about the issue. Hive NYC's Julia Vallera presented a menu of digital tools for students to consider integrating into their designs; from apps to text messaging campaigns. "There are no limitations" she said. "Think outside the box." With that, the students were off in their groups -- drawing, writing, and brainstorming their way to digital solutions. During the presentations, the four judges -- Jess Klein and Atul Varma from Mozilla, Erica Doyle, Assistant Principal at Vanguard High School, and Jasmine Hood from Common Sense Media – were treated to five stellar pitches for new digital tools. One group dreamed up a website that followed a human body metaphor - the mouth would link to a section to help victims speak out, the ear to a section for listening to testimonials, and "tears" collecting at the bottom of the screen would contain words of inspiration and support from the community. Another group decided to place QR codes in locations that teens frequent the most in order to direct them to the campaign website. The “Insert Title Here” group’s proposal included a “choose your own adventure” game that would guide players to make choices in scenarios of sexual cyberbullying. The "Tech Geeks" team won with their idea for an informational website and an app that victims would be able to use to report offensive photos and seek the support of specialists. While everybody couldn’t walk away from the competition with a gift card, the rewards of the program went far beyond. In an email to GK’s Juan Rubio, one student wrote about how he’d love to continue learning Photoshop, something he began to explore during Thursday’s event:
“Gracias por toda su ayuda y aunque no ganamos, ganamos porque aprendimos mucho de cyberbullying y también de tecnología. (Thank you for all of your help, and even though we didn’t win, we won, because we learned a lot about cyberbullying and also about technology). Thank you to Project:Connect and our panel of judges, Brooklyn Public Library’s Jen Thompson and Jackson Gomes, and WNYC Radio Rookies’ Kaari Pitkin, Courtney Stein and Sanda Htyte. For more coverage of the event, check out SchoolBook! Freelance producer Karen Duffin also produced a radio piece about the event, featuring OLP's very own Jack Martin and Juan Rubio! |
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