Students were assigned to build games that educated elementary students based on the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) requirements, a set of academic standards used in the state similar to the Common Core Standards. Other organizations in Austin that are using video games to teach STEM skills include Girlstart, Latinitas and the Globaloria program at East Austin College Prep.With the help of a grant from the Wimberley Education Foundation, Wimberley High School was able to purchase academic licenses of GameSalad. "And when students see their own work being published on an iPhone or an iPad or an Android, that further immerses them in the fun of learning and designing."
"If you can have them immediately load their own art and their own music, they can play the game more immediately and see the results," Conover said. And the way the games can be personalized adds to their engagement, he said. Students learn to think about the concepts and overall objectives and learn programming along the way.
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We’re bringing them from being consumers of video games to being creators."Ĭonover said that the drag-and-drop interface allows students and educators to jump in and begin designing without having to learn to code first. "That is a medium that so many children in our country are incredibly familiar with, in many cases before they can talk or read or write. One study, which dates back to 2011 from NPD, showed that 91 percent of children aged 2 to 17 play video games.ĭusing said that experience creates excitement around learning by designing games. It helps administrators and teachers hit these objectives they have."įor students, learning computer science skills by designing video games is one path into learning that traffics on what's often an abundant familiarity with the subject. "(The curriculum covers) the core fundamentals of computer science and of STEM. "Many schools don't have the budget for a computer science teacher and there's a lack of teachers trained in computer science," Dusing said. One of the advantages of GameSalad's curriculum, Dusing says, is that it can be taught by educators who don't have a degree in computer science.
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Connally High School in north Austin, has about 125 students each year learning how to create games using GameSalad.ĭavid Conover, who teaches the Serious Video Games program at the school, said that over about eight years, he's seen the program become transformational for at-risk students. GameSalad has worked with several hundred schools and recently received Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills approval from the Texas Education Agency for its game-development curriculum.
Now the company is linking its products to the education market as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) has become a major focus in schools and the tech industry has created major demand for computer science workers.
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In 2009, the company's GameSalad Creator launched, allowing developers for the web, iOS devices and Android to make games, and hundreds of thousands of playable creations have followed. When Austin-based GameSalad formed in 2007, it was with the intent of making it easier for developers to quickly create video games.
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