In December, my students worked on an entire unit around science-based video game design. They created and published their own video games. It’s more complicated than I can explain here (but we did capture it on our website about the gaming project). Many kids are still working on revising and improving their video games long after the project ended. One of them has almost 1,000 plays of his game in the Gamestar Mechanic community.
Yesterday, I helped a handful of students achieve a goal of theirs. We submitted their science-based video games into the 2012 STEM Video Game Challenge.
I have no idea how they will do on the national stage against other middle school game designers, but they were very excited to get all of the application completed and to know that their video game creations (which are excellent examples of gaming, science and writing, if you don’t mind a very biased opinion) are in the mix for a national award.
Me? I am proud of them for sticking with it and having the confidence in their abilities as game designers, and I am very glad that we seemed to have gotten everything done that we needed to get done for moving their game into the challenge (as far as I can tell. To be honest, the application process is not as clear as it could be).
And now, we wait until May, when the winners are announced. But we will still be playing and building games. That never stops.
Peace (in the game system),
Kevin