App Rising

App Rising, Washington DC, April 22, 2009

Witnessing the Future of Education in Lafayette
Geoff Daily

Writing from Lafayette, LA, over the last few days I’ve witnessed an amazing confluence of events that suggest the future of education is being built down here in Cajun country.

On Friday and Saturday I attended the Digital Workforce Conference at LITE (short for Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprise, which is a fantastic 3D visualization facility), which is put on by 3D Squared, a non-profit focused on workforce development for the digital media and gaming industries.

Friday was the culmination of what had been an 8-day intensive workshop where high school kids formed teams tasked with conceptualizing, designing, and building a videogame. The final step then was for them to present their games to a panel of industry experts as if they were pitching them to publishers.

The games they created were built on a new gaming platform that’s currently in closed beta called Metaplace, which enables the creation of virtual worlds. And the kids’ presentations helped showcase the multifaceted process it took to create these games, including developing the concept and game mechanics, creating the graphical style, recording sound and voiceovers in many cases, building the world using the Metaplace tools, and even some actual programming to make the worlds act in different ways.

On Saturday a series of panel discussions and presentations helped reinforce the fact that by teaching kids how to create games you’re teaching them to think critically and creatively in a lot of different ways while also keeping them engaged with a process that’s fun.

But I should also say that just because the kids were having fun doesn’t mean they weren’t taking it seriously. In fact I got a chance to poke my nose into one team’s meeting and was amazed at the professionalism with which the students conducted themselves and the level of the discussion they were holding. And I learned that in order to create these games they were putting in 12+ hour days, working effectively in teams, and being respectful of their peers and others.

While I’m not sure if teaching videogame development is the panacea for all students and to fix all our educational problems, this event helped showcase how it can foster learning and why we should seriously consider supporting efforts like these as we work to redefine what education means in the 21st century.

http://www.app-rising.com/2009/04/witnessing_the_future_of_educa.html