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.