Awesome_E Teaching underserved children problem solving and creative thinking skills through video game design
I loved to play video games as a child, and in third grade, I learned basic game design through an enrichment class. Since then, I have never forgotten the joy of programming. Video games helped me to learn programming in an engaging way, and I wanted to share this passion with others. In November 2019, I gathered with two friends, Ethan and Daniel, to create the GameChanger Project. Our mission was to provide a pathway to success for under-served children by providing free introductory programming courses.
Over the summer of 2020, we hosted a 5-week in-person class in Greater Anaheim Cypress, and our students collectively created 36 games. However, because of COVID, this was the only in-person class we were able to schedule. Leading up to the summer, we pivoted to creating online content as well, where I rose as the Content Manager.
While the three of us collectively worked on the ideas to teach in the in-person course, structuring the video was different. I created the format for our videos and edited most of our tutorials, allowing our project to reach over 67,000 individuals.
Change is inevitable, but it doesn’t have to slow us down. Through the GameChanger Project, we learned that situations like the lockdown often give us the opportunity to expand in ways we could never expect when first designing a program. Because we embraced the change, it ended up helping us quite a bit, as online content allowed us to reach a completely new audience, and we could focus our energy for in-person courses into making our 5-week class the best it could be.
