Here is a great video from Edutopia about Rhys, a 10 year old boy from Texas, who likes to;

“play baseball and play Gamestar Mechanic.  I really like making games because you get to be really creative with it.  Okay. So right now I’m logging into Gamestar Mechanic. It’s pretty much the only platform I make games on. You can have it be a story game. You can have it be a blasting game. You can have it be an easy game, a hard game. I mean, really, you can do almost anything.”  In this video, Rhys shows some of the games that he has made and what he has learned.

Kurt Squire says that;

“One real key attribute of Gamestar Mechanic is that you have an authentic audience, right? So in most classrooms you’re building stuff for your teacher who may or may not have time to read your essay that you wrote just because it’s an essay. But Gamestar Mechanic has a vibrant community where people are making games for real people, real audiences that have real demands and expectations. So you have to think about “How is my audience gonna perceive this? How are they gonna perceive my message? What are they gonna take away from it?” And Gamestar Mechanic has that really built in and so that’s really key for learning. It’s something we’re not doing in our schools.”

To learn more follow this link to Edutopia;

http://www.edutopia.org/is-school-enough-game-based-learning-stem-video

Related articles

• Gamestar Mechanic (avalonmn.wordpress.com)
• Are Kids Who Make Their Own Video Games Better Prepared For The Digital Future? (forbes.com)