Game Education Summit North America

Paper Abstract:

Karen Collins will discuss "Forging the Game Entrepreneur: Waterloo's Model" will describe initiatives in and out of the classroom that foster the entrepreneurial spirit and encourage students to form game-related start-ups.

Jeannette Kopak will give an overview of the first three years of our program and what we have learned.

Avrim Katzman's presentation will discuss thatalthough Sheridan has been involved in the Digital Game industry for many years on the content side by virtue of its animation, illustration and media courses, it has only recently sought to specifically represent game design in its curriculum. This presentation will focus on past, present, and future game-related research and curriculum developments at Sheridan.

Emma Westecott, is a recent import to Canada and her research interests include the celebration of digital games as an expressive art form and the potential for practice-based research to extend, enhance and conceive of game form in new and creative ways. Her research focus is centred on the ongoing creative evolution of game form, both in terms of new experience and new human possibilities. This, and the impressive body of work created under her leadership of the zerogame studio in Sweden, brought her to OCAD to teach games and develop the games research initiative.

Emma Westecott's topic for GES North America: OCAD's game design and game studies provision is aligned with the thriving independent game scene in Toronto. This presentation outlines OCAD's plans to support a new generation of critically educated and creatively informed game designers ready to imagine the future of gaming.

Richard Lachman, Assistant Professor, Digital Media, School of Radio and Television Arts, Ryerson University will be joining the CDN panel
Talk: Race to Mars
Race to Mars is an innovative blending of broadcast television, documentary, Serious Games, educational content and academic research. Originating as a Discovery Channel Canada initiative, Race to Mars was conceived of as a hard-science-based documentary and a dramatized mini-series about a human mission to Mars. The 2007 television event, exhaustively researched and created with the input of over 175 scientists and space agencies around the world, included a major interactive and educational-outreach initiative from its very inception. Two 3D science-based Serious Games (Rover XPL and Mission Two) were built on commercial game-engines, and were supported by a collection of web-games, interactive science-content and an online community-website. The project has recently been extended by "Mars Rocks", a curriculum-based experience using video-games, mini-documentaries, a graphic-novel and educational content in a formal, in-school context. Mars Rocks was recently pilot-tested in the York Region school-board, and will be rolled out for more general classroom use in Fall 2010.