Strike the Match! Light the Spark! Young Game Designers Challenge

Riddle me, riddle me ray
What's missing from the school day?
Problem solving, deduction,
Collaboration and action.
Why not bring it back through game designers' satisfaction?

Strike a match! Spark an ember of curiosity! Light the fire of a learner's imagination! Part of the collateral damage foisted upon much of the American public education system in the past decade is the lack of time, space, impetus, and freedom for learners to imagine, to invent, to create something from scratch.

School librarians recognize these critical pieces of our education ecosystem. Educators and public youth services professionals must create opportunities and spaces for creative thinking if we want to prepare future citizens who envision solutions to known and unforeseeable problems and move to social action.

We invented our own twist on the makerspace: young game designers' challenge. Integrating both the Explore and Inquire foundations of the new AASL standards, this article examines our building blocks in order to help you generate your own designers' environment.

Background

After attending the annual Chicago Toy and Game Week (ChiTAG) and discovering the Young Inventor Challenge in 2014, I marshalled a group of Indiana school librarians and pre-librarian candidates to mine the idea for potential. The designers of ChiTAG's Young Inventor Challenge encourage librarians, teachers, scout leaders, club leaders, and other professionals who work with youth to use their materials to host their own local events. Their site reads,

Inventor Workshops are ideal for a classroom activity, school-wide competition, after-school program, summer challenge, scout merit badge-earning activity, even for library programming.

Use our Inventor Guide and additional resources to help kids imagine, design, test, and create their own toy or game inventions. Whether you hold a one-day workshop or a series of workshops, use it to engage kids in a positive and challenging endeavor.

Once the inventions are complete, don't stop there! The Young Inventor Challenge can provide a means of taking the inventions to even greater heights, with professional critiques from our industry experts and the opportunity to show their work off to the public, toy industry, and members of the press.

Chicago Toy & Game Week. "Young Inventor Challenge—12th Year!" 2018. https://www.chitag.com/yic..

Premise of Our Idea

Over the course of two years, we massaged the challenge set forth on the ChiTAG website. We worked together to design a summer learning opportunity for Indianapolis urban youth which manifested itself as the Young Game Designers Challenge Summer Enrichment Camp. In 2018, we formed a partnership with MSD Pike Township schools to allow us to run the camp as part of their summer enrichment offerings. This ensured several key elements: excited students, a safe school location, district transportation, supplies, and school breakfast and lunch. The summer classes were offered to the district's 11,000+ students for $30/week and included transportation and meals. We chose to pilot the camp in two classes: a second-third grade group and a fourth-fifth grade group. Two of Pike's certified and experienced elementary school librarians were hired to teach the camp sessions and act as mentors to the school library graduate student intern.

In early spring every Pike student in grades one through eight was invited to attend Summer STRETCH Enrichment. Several marketing efforts were used to encourage families to look at the catalog of approximately thirty-five different options to select activities that suited students' interests and passions These opportunities ranged from music and art-based camps to STEAM-focused camps to a nearby farm camp for urban youth. Families registered and paid on-line by early May. A well-attended organizational meeting with final details for families and the camp teachers was held at the high school the week before the camps started in mid-June.

The Big Picture

At its core, our design provided a ten-day opportunity for kids who elected to come to "summer school" for board game playing and creative thought. The curriculum, based upon the ChiTAG Young Inventor Design Guide (http://www.chitag.com/guide-and-resources), centered upon daily game playing and analysis; brainstorming and creative design; and prototyping and test play of student games.

Initially, the days' activities centered on analyzing the types of games students had played and introducing games with which they might not be familiar. In the first days of camp an equal amount of time was spent fostering collaboration and team support, and providing activities that encouraged creativity and imagination. For example, throughout camp a total of three different break out mystery box challenges were undertaken by the classes which managed to solve each with increasing levels of expertise! Students also journaled several times each day about various activities to reflect on their learning and capture ideas that were percolating.

Toward the middle and end of week one, students used their design journals to brainstorm a board game they wanted to prototype. By the end of the week, students left with their game ideas and a list of supplies they would try to obtain from home over the weekend if they needed things beyond the arts and craft supplies available at camp. The two camp teachers were allotted $50 each for design supplies. A chunk of this was used to purchase the individual design journal (notebook), enough board-game-sized corrugated cardboard sheets for each child to have one, as well as construction paper, and markers. Glue guns and random game pieces like tokens and blank tagboard cards were scavenged, begged, and borrowed. Teachers used the weekend to track down specialty supplies they felt able to supply.

Week two was cyclical in nature. Each day still included time to experience and play a variety of games, but large chunks of each day were spent with each child designing their game board and pieces; writing, word processing, and printing game play directions; testing and returning to design. Wednesday afforded each class time to visit the other and participate in test play environments. Summer administrators and guests were invited to the test play event. Peers gave feedback, and students used the feedback to tweak their games as they headed into the final two days of camp.

Camp culminated in a family game night where each designer shared his or her game with family and friends. The two-hour event was hosted by 4Kids Books & Toys, a local independent book and toy store. Families participated in a Goose Chase scavenger hunt which encouraged them to meet the summer camp instructors, play other students' games, and dared them to complete a family break out challenge created specifically for the evenings' event. More than half the camp families attended. This was especially rewarding given that the camp participants came from nine different elementary schools and family game night was held at a business off school property!

What's Happened since Camp?

In November, two of the camp participants entered their games in the Young Inventors Challenge and traveled to Chicago to participate in an amazing day of events at ChiTAG. Our kids were just two of the applicants, ranging in age from six to eighteen from seventeen states and eight countries, who entered their games this year. Each child was assigned to a small cohort group where s/he had to speak about the original game's design and rules, as well as field questions from the industry experts assigned to mentor the group. Participants experienced two judging rounds with different mentors each time. At the conclusion of the day, student winners were awarded monetary prizes in a variety of judging areas. About three weeks after the event, the students received all the judges' comments to help them prepare their next entry. Both our students were thrilled to participate and plan to return next fall with new game ideas!

What's on the Horizon?

We have agreed to provide two camp sessions during Pike's Summer STRETCH Enrichment 2019. We will make slight changes to the ages with the younger group including just students going into third grade this year. Our older camp will still be a multi-age format for students going into fourth and fifth grades. Ultimately, we plan to make this year's Young Game Designers Challenge Camp bigger and better than last year!

Wanna Try?

Explore ways to use the ideas of the Young Inventors Challenge to generate your own opportunities for learners to become the next game inventor! Whether you're adding to an existing makerspace, co-teaching strategy, problem solving, and game design within classroom curriculum, spawning a club, or designing a camp, use these seeds of inspiration for your next grand plan!

Special Thanks
The daily curriculum plans for the two-week camp were written by Alayna Pierce, K-5 School Librarian, Franklin Township Community School Corporation, Indianapolis, IN.
The camp sessions were taught by Sally Hamlin (Gr. 2-3) and Dr. Margaret Boling Mullin, (Gr. 4-5). Both are elementary school librarians in the Metropolitan School District of Pike Township, Indianapolis, IN.
Stephanie Croaning, a school library candidate in the IUPUI Library and Information Science Master's Program, was an intern and co-teacher with mentor, Mrs. Hamlin, for the 2-3 students.