We’ve offered our youth programs, which we call Think Tank sessions, in different configurations. Here, we share the specific schedules as a guide. We encourage you to use this as you want to and share with us.
5-Day Schedule — Face to Face
We bring 12-15 youth in for a half-day, Monday through Friday, either mornings (8:30 am - 12:00 pm) or afternoons (1:00 - 4:30 pm). They spend the week doing a wide range of activities, but work a little each day towards presenting a final game pitch to family and game development professionals on Friday.
The focus of this session is to develop youth’s critical media review and social-emotional understanding. Youth play and evaluate games, collaborate with peers, and spend less time developing their design knowledge and skills. When sessions happen online, online pitches give youth additional skills of learning how to present on Zoom — a recently appreciated digital skill. For their final project, youth individually complete a presentation in which they pitch and review a game they recommend peers, educators, or developers play.
Online 5 Day Schedule (Shorter sessions)
We bring 9 - 12 youth together online for 2-hour blocks (10 am - 12 pm or 1:30 - 3:30 pm), Monday - Friday. Many of toolkit activities are doable online, but the time is shortened due participants’ challenge with stay engaged for more than 2 hours. They spend the week doing activities that prepare them to present a final game pitch on Friday.
The focus of this session is to develop youth’s critical media review and social-emotional understanding. Youth play and evaluate games, collaborate with peers, and spend less time developing their design knowledge and skills. Online pitches give youth additional skills of learning how to present on Zoom — a recently appreciated digital skill. For their final project, youth individually complete a presentation in which they pitch and review a game they recommend peers, educators, or developers play.
4-Day Schedule — Face to Face (Shorter sessions)
We bring 12-15 youth in for a half-day, Tuesday through Friday, either mornings (8:30 am - 12:00 pm) or afternoons (1:00 - 4:30 pm). They spend the week doing a range of design and game review activities, but work a little each day towards presenting a final game pitch to family and game development professionals on Friday.
The focus of this session is to develop youth’s critical media review, design knowledge and skills, and social-emotional understanding, but with fewer activities than the 5-day session. Youth play and evaluate games and discuss game mechanics and design with peers. For their final project, youth collaborate in teams of 2 - 3 to complete a presentation and game wireframe, where they share the change they are wanting to make in the game player, the basic game play, sample title, and screenshots. Parents and game developers are encouraged to watch the presentations and ask questions.