2011 Awards announced for the Future Game Designer Challenge Student Game Design Competition

2011 Awards announced for the Future Game Designer Challenge Student Game Design Competition.
Olathe, Kansas May 20, 2011 – The Support Learning Foundation (SLF) announced the winners of the second annual Future Game Designer Challenge www.futuregamedesigner.com . The FGDC is the first competition for middle and high school students to create the next generation of edutainment (games that entertain and educate). Divisions of the competition include: High School Edutainment, Middle School Edutainment, Women Designed Games and Health Games.
This year’s competition drew competitors from all over the US. Middle and high school students created a wide array of engaging games to teach students a variety of topics; Physics, Meteorology, Space, Pre-Algebra, Geometry, Multiplication, Division, Recycling, and History. All of these games had two main things in common. The first were they were fun to play and the second was they helped students learn.
“We want students to be creators.” commented Steve Waddell, founder of the Support Learning Foundation and the Chief Creative Officer of Edmagineer. “We have designed the competition to allow the student creators to have the chance to experience the excitement of creating a game that helps others to learn. So, this competition has students creating games that draw the player in and once engaging the player/learner has them interact with the target knowledge and concepts. You would be amazed at how creative and clever our student game designers are.”
This year the middle school division was the largest group of submittals. We also saw many new schools that participated. The winners of the competition divisions were:

High School Edutainment
First Place – The Galactic Adventures of Ike by team TADA from Blaine High School Blaine, MN
Second Place – Gravity Ball by team Genius Minds from Copperas Cove HS Copperas Cove, TX

Middle School Edutainment
First Place – The Cloud Game by team Eele from the Bolles School Jacksonville, FL
Second Place – Face the Math by team Royal Company El Rancho Charter School Anaheim Hills, CA

Health Games/DDR
First Place – Survive the Disasters by team Bulldogs from the Bolles School Jacksonville, FL

Women Designed Games
First Place – Precipitation by team Christen from the Bolles School Jacksonville FL
Runner Up – Math Quiz Game by team Fusion from El Rancho Charter School Anaheim Hills CA

As part of the competition students had to turn in a developers log, document their code, show how their game helped meet state and national learning standards, create marketing materials like posters, cd cases, cd labels. They had to create an engaging storyline and then make the game and game play support the story concept. All this while making sure their games had real educational value.
Steve Waddell who developed the competition in 2007 stated, “One purpose to this competition is to get students to take responsibility to help the next generation. So, we have high school students creating games for middle school. Middle school students create games to give back to elementary. This way the games are coming to the learner from the students who are just a head a grade or two. All I can say is it seems to work. This is project based learning meets service learning at its best”.

The Support Learning Foundation would like to thank two groups who help us make this competition happen every year. First a big thanks to our sponsors including: Ideal Advantage, ITWomen.org, The Engineering, Computer Science and Technology Department at Cal State LA, and I Support Learning, Inc./Edmagineer. Secondly we want to thank our judges led by Shaun Walker. They did a great job this year and held our competition standards high. Thank you all.

About The Support Learning Foundation
SLF (www.supportlearningfoundation.org) The Support Learning Foundation believes that education - if encouraged and provided - can allow individuals to achieve their dreams and maximize their potential. Therefore, the Support Learning Foundation is committed to creating change by providing research, development, and deployment of innovative methodologies and technologies.

Support Learning Foundation
PO Box 398
Olathe, KS 66061

This release was published on openPR.