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Care to get gaming in School?

Hello All,

A startup in techEd, GamingDen, I started last year as a summer program for kids aged 6-14 years where they can be taught to make games to make  better use of swanky gadgets that they own. And not to mention the amount of time and energy and definitely sharp wits, that they have at their disposal.

Since not many offerings are available in the Indian scene, definitely not one in Mumbai, the venture is liked and appreciated by select parents (mostly from software scene), This was taken beyond summer camp to, after school program in schools.

Although not many are aware of the benefits programming and game design can bring along for kids this young. Problem solving, being the biggest take away here in fun and engaging manner, schools and parents are skeptical as computers have been the most neglected cousin of mainstream education. Schools conveniently scrap off chapters, as no marks are tied to them and definitely no emotions of parents, who are busy bullying English, Science and Maths. Programming gets pushed till about 8 or 9th standard, that too if you are lucky, else its just a mention for most kids even in big time international schools.

I have a couple of concerns at this stage:-

1) One of course is connecting with right people, I am a software engineer, from development background with an experience in being an ex faculty at NIIT and corporate trainer also handling development of some communication related products. Gaming being engaging is a perfect fit to teach programming & computer science concepts to kids. My idea is to teach a host of emotional skills, moral, skills, carve a personality, apart from tech, using the power of storytelling animation etc. ..Can you smell too much here…?  Actually sky is the limit, I can propose a whole year of computers within school hours which can well replace a mighty part of projects, which are more of copy and paste stuff, why not let them use apps and games in classrooms for learning and then inspire them and get them into creation Well well well…..but we were talking gaming. yes so coming back there, we call it “Creating magical explorations”.

There are many websites out there, offering a pre-developed hour of code kind of thing, but that fails to push and provide challenges to these extremely sharp kids. So a need to connect with a Gaming enterprise, to provide the gaming scenario expertise and carving out a perfect path that is enjoyable and worth the hard work kids go through and if we could get mentors for the same, nothing like it. I have planned an age wise structure from my end after doing some research and going through videos on youtube, but I feel it has gone outdated in past one year and there could be better offerings out there. I am using Python and combination of javascript, java etc. for higher levels. One of the python along with pygame, screen shot comes up here.

Also the minecraft scene is pretty bad here

(I mean India, Mumbai, etc in adults of course… kids are quite good at it though). Does anybody have exposure with Minecraft modding and other stuff. As it provides a host of benefits to kids and they love getting their hands dirty there, this would really help. I am totally zapped off my energy with this mine…thingy. phew……:)

3) Connecting with schools and convincing them for the same as a parameter of kids further development. Although this can be manageable to some extent, to provide a decent number as of now.

Also, you are welcome to share your ideas, suggestions, feasibility etc. on the above setup.

My website is in development phase, so I’m sorry, no tangible link as of now, you can have some idea from my facebook page .

Any leads on above points would be very helpful.

Thanks Guys.

I am @tojyoti on twitter.

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4 Comments

  1. hey jyoti,

    this sounds really neat! since you’re based in mumbai, why don’t you write to alok@rodinhood.com cc manoj@rodinhood.com and seek an appointment with alok? he meets at least one entrepreneur every day so am sure you would be able to gain some insights from him!!

    also pls go through EVERYTHING priyadeep and pardeep goyal have written on edtech. i’m pinging both priyadeep & mandar to check out your post but do feel free to ask any query to priyadeep on ASK PRIYADEEP page!

    https://www.therodinhoods.com/forum/topics/ask-priyadeep-about-ed-tech-student-entrepreneurship

  2. Thanks so much Asha, will surely do the same.

  3. Check out what I had presented way back!

    ***

  4. Hi Alok, 

    Thanks for this lovely presentation, with so many good examples.Way back in 2011! Well, People have realized the potential of Games, I guess, but the number is far less, when there are more issues to handle, may be. 

    I would really like to get in touch with you, for your take on present scenario and if  I could gain from your experience in formulating an exciting and challenging Course structure which is useful for overall development of kids, as part of our setup. If you can provide some pointers on these, would be great.

    Thanks again, your reply is definitely encouraging otherwise I also feel guilty at times, that I might be pushing the addiction of games further in taking up an activity of this type, as you would all the time hear that people don’t like educational games, and they finally switch to the addictive ones. which is true on most occasion. I really wish that we could make games which reverses all the present perceptions like we replace violence with love, no arms or deafening sounds, rather setting up situations where kids learn to empathise & want to be there to help. (the most missing link in today’s education) What do you see of this? there are games made on these lines, but again they are not popular and what s the point in making something which is not reaching the audience.

    Would love to have ur views, if time permits.

    Thanks.

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