Spotlight on Digital Media And Learning

4.19.11 | Earlier this month, the White House announced the winners of its National STEM Video Game Challenge. Shireen Zaineb, a seventh-grader who attends Milwaukee Montessori School in Wisconsin, won for “Discover…” a game about mass, friction, weight and gravity that she created using the Gamestar Mechanic platform.

As part of Spotlight’s case study series on digital media in the classroom, Heather Chaplin reports on the technology program at Zaineb’s school and other programs like it around the country that are using Gamestar Mechanic to spark learning and creativity. The gaming platform teaches students how to design their own games through systems thinking, collaboration and problem solving.

Bailey Sperling, a sixth-grader at Suffern Middle School in Montebello, N.Y., also won for most playable game with “Extreme Depths,” which teaches users about the ocean.

Sperling used her dad as her user-testing group to “make sure the game was challenging enough for adults.” He found his daughter’s game to be a lot harder than he expected, and he’s no novice.

“My dad really loves video games,” Sperling said.

Watch the video above. And read more at Spotlight about how Zaineb and Sperling used Gamestar Mechanic to develop their award-winning projects.