Level up from video game player to video game designer!
Inspired by President Obama’s Educate to Innovate Campaign to promote a renewed focus on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) education, the National STEM Video Game Challenge taps into middle and high school students’ passion for playing video games and motivates them to work as individuals or in teams to design and make original, playable games or written game design documents about any subject. Registration is now open and submissions are due by August 15, 2016.
New this Year: Nat Geo Explore!
National Geographic is bringing the spirit of exploration to video gaming and sponsoring a new prize stream called Nat Geo Explore. This prize is open to any eligible design document or playable game submission that thematically expresses the spirit of exploration and adventure. Winners will have their games and game design documents featured on the National Geographic Education website, which reaches more than 1 million visitors a month, and also will receive additional National Geographic merchandise.
Revolutionary Learning 2016 will Bring Together Leaders from Higher Education, K-12, Government, and the Nonprofit and Corporate World to Showcase Game-Based Innovation that Transform Learning in an Effort to Help Solve Multidimensional 21st Century Problems.
Sessions include a dynamic mix of unrestricted panel discussions by renowned experts in assessment, research, and ethics; collaborative demonstrations of game-based classroom practices; space to create your own game-based learning activities, and numerous opportunities to network and collaborate in a fun, game-like atmosphere. Register now at http://www.revolutionarylearning.org/
Mauricio Giraldo, a designer in the New York Public Library Labs, made a video game using some of the library’s own collections of public domain materials, and the institution is hoping you’ll follow.
In Giraldo’s game, Mansion Maniac, you control Pac-Man-esque, pixelated character, guiding through real, early-century floor plans of New York City homes and apartments. As you move from room to room, the game will automatically load and attach more of these authentic, historical layouts to the luxurious world, and when you’re done, you can save and print out the floorplan to show all your friends that New York apartments have always been very small.
Giraldo’s Mansion Maniac is just one project created as an illustration for the variety of ways programmers and artists could use NYPL’s digital resources.
Educators coming together to explore how the principles of games promote learning
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