Game Education with Youth
Our maker programs spark youth imagination in Science, Technology, Art, Engineering, and Science. Youth explore and learn by playing, making and designing games together. In learning to collaborate, our mentors support youth to develop their social-emotional skills, community leadership, and wellness.
Youth Game Camps
• Provide immersive, maker-based learning environment for youth to explore, discover, and engage newfound interests. Game camps range from 2-day to week long events focused on pathways of art and animation, programming and computer science, and story and design. We design camps to support a wide spectrum of youth learners in Grades 4-12.
Youth Expos
• Create opportunities in entrepreneurship and real-world engagement with community. We offer regular opportunities at expos, conventions, and faires for youth to showcase their game design work. These events allow youth to play test their ideas, develop communicative skills, and learn about the marketplace of games.
Game Jams
• Offer condensed periods of time–ranging from a half day to a weekend–for youth to invent and build a game in the company of other enthusiasts. Besides finding a community of like-minded game developers, jams allow youth to form teams and rapidly prototype game ideas. Game jams help promote key habits and practices of successful game development including group communication, team management and collaborative inquiry.
Maker Places for Games
Schools are not the only place to develop 21st Century skills in game development. Maker places combine the best of hackerspaces and project-based inquiry by providing community driven, open facilities to discover, explore and build. The goal of our maker places programs is to provide access to tools and resources for independently published games. We focus on building bridges between formal and informal learning contexts. Part showcase, part playlab, maker spaces help reduce barriers of access and create shared resources for prosperity.
Pixel Arts Playlabs
• Instead of a permanent dedicated space, our pop-up program creates temporary maker places where youth congregate: libraries, community centers, science museums, religious places and schools. We roll in, set up, and host an immersive environments for informal learning. Pop-ups can be tailored to age groups and learning needs, allowing youth to walk-in and try their hand at many different activities.
Maker Neighbors
• Maker places are showing up in increasing diversity, but often, they are silos of activity limited to their physical space. Our maker neighbors program is designed to build bridges between programs and increase community resources through video conferencing, tool libraries and shared mentoring. By networking our neighborhood maker places together, we can increase opportunities available to youth and reduce barriers of access.
