Gaming

U Colorado Boulder Hosts Game Design Institute for STEM Teachers

• By Joshua Bolkan
• 06/17/15

A group of about 100 K-12 teachers has finished a week-long summer institute, dubbed Scalable Game Design, at the University of Colorado Boulder designed to help them use game design to teach computer science.

The group of STEM and language arts teachers also learned about teaching computational, critical thinking and problem solving literacy through activities such as student demonstrations of video games made with fruit, Play-Doh and USB cables.

Funded by the National Science Foundation and Google CS4HS, the institute provides free training to accepted teachers from the United States at beginner, intermediate and advanced levels.

"This is where the future is headed," said Torrey Thomas, business and computer teacher at Rangeview High School, in a prepared statement. "Everything deals with technology. There will be a big shortage of (qualified employees). We need to get kids involved a younger age."

Thomas said that game design is a painless way to get students interested in computer science concepts. "They just love games and playing video games," he said. "They don't look at it as school work."

More information about the Scalable Game Design summer institute is available at colorado.edu.