Jonathan Smith

h-index15
2papers
1,019citations

2 Papers

2.3CYMay 11, 2018
Pocket Game Jams: a Constructionist Approach at Schools

Anja Petri, Christian Schindler, Wolfgang Slany et al.

The constructionist approach is more interested in constructing personal experience than about acquiring information. It states that learning is most effective when building knowledge through active engagement. Experiential and discovery learning by challenges inspire creativity, and projects allow independent thinking and new ways of learning information. This paper describes how the "No One Left Behind" (NOLB) project plans to integrate this approach into school curricula using two concepts. The first one is to enable students to create their own games with Pocket Code by using its easy-to-learn visual programming language. The second concept is to foster collaboration and teamwork through hands-on sessions by conducting Game Jams using Pocket Code, so called Pocket Game Jams. We present insights into such a Pocket Game Jam and give an outlook on how we will use this concept.

2.3CYMay 11, 2018
Pocket Code: a mobile app for game jams to facilitate classroom learning through game creation

Bernadette Spieler, Anja Petri, Christian Schindler et al.

Game jams are a way to create games under fast-paced conditions and certain constraints. The increase in game jam events all over the world, their engaging and creative nature, with the aim of sharing results among players can be seen in the high participation rate of such events (2013: 16,705 participants from 319 jam sites in 63 countries produced 3248 games) . This promising concept can be easily transferred to a classroom setting.