Teaching Game Design and Development

Author: Laura.Martin

Last week, Digital Schoolhouse (DSH) hosted its first Lead Teacher Meeting of the new academic year,  bringing  together our community of Digital Schoolhouse teachers to harness and grow their programme outreach and development.

Meetings largely consist of 50% operational progress and updates, and 50% CPD training; both highly beneficial in maintaining an effective and innovative programme in each of our Schoolhouses. Delivered throughout the year, these days ensure everyone involved in DSH stays well connected and inspired, as we ever-strive to realise our vision.

Our September assembly, saw a jam-packed day of activities and opportunities for our teachers to experience, from The Duke of York’s iDEA, to King Edwards VI School’s Recursion Computing Fair. Teachers also experienced two amazing workshops from our friends in the games industry.

Melissa Phillips from BAFTA Games, led ‘Teaching Game Design Essentials with BAFTA Young Game Designers’ for our teachers to understand how they might implement game design in the classroom.  This included playing the BAFTA YGD Card Game, which aims to get students thinking about how game ideas are generated and what makes them successful.

Continuing with the theme of teaching games, Liz Mercuri from Unity delivered a session on ‘Teaching Practical Game Development’. Here, teachers built their own 2D physics game using Playground Project; a project aimed at beginner game developers to aid their understanding of scripts.

If you want to find out more about how to teach games, check out Loopy Games, developed with Kuato Studios and the Video Games Ambassadors, and Oddventurous Gaming, developed in collaboration with Disney and Playniac.

Find out how you can become a Digital Schoolhouse Lead teacher or book a workshop.

Find out how you can support the programme and help us to continue helping teachers  - harnessing their creativity and shaping the next generation.

Logos