Helping design for a “community”

A while back, I was fortunate enough to connect with the NGO L’Albero della Vita, whose mission can be summarized as “build better communities”. Their incredible educators strive to help families and children, in disadvantaged areas, overcome poverty and lack of resources. Not only did I have the privilege of learning about their work, but I was also able to contribute to their cause.

Initially, I felt a little overwhelmed, my coding and designing skills seeming far removed from what those people required. Then I asked myself: how could I use my knowledge to inspire these children and ignite their passion for the field I love while giving them a glimpse of the possibilities their future could hold? The answer was obvious: Video Games!

Meeting the students.

I was assigned to the fifth-grade class (10 y.o.) of a school in a particularly challenging environment, Ponticelli, where social and economic hardship was rampant. The school representatives chose this class because they felt it was the one most in need of extracurricular activities to help build self-awareness and team-working skills (some of the students were engaged in frequent disputes). When I entered the classroom, I was warmly welcomed by a diverse group of students, who already knew I was there to help them build a video game. Following my beloved UX principles, I started by asking questions to get to know my students better. To my surprise, some of them already owned complete gaming setups, while others didn’t even have a computer. Despite the technological gap, all of them shared a love of video games and played regularly.

Let’s find a story!

To set us off on our journey, I proposed an interactive activity that highlighted the history of programming languages and video games. We started with Ada Lovelace, considered the first programmer, and discussed the range of programming language applications until we reached our ultimate goal: video game creation. Then, I challenged the students with a timed quiz: they had to guess the titles and the characters of various influential video games. Then, together, we identified the common themes and stories underlying them. With this in mind, I explained Christopher Vogler’s “Hero’s Journey” narrative structure in a simplified way and divided the students into five groups. Each group was tasked with developing their own version of each phase of the “Hero’s Journey”. After collecting one project from each group, I combined them to form the collective narrative basis for the video game we were going to build. The result was fun and fanciful (there were zombies and dragons) but not devoid of elements of the student’s everyday life (the zombies arrive in Vesuviana and the hero is helped by the citizens).

Let’s build the characters!

I asked the students to write or draw something they liked about themselves, something they appreciated in the people they loved, and something they’d like to change about themselves. This served as the basis for building the characters of our game — the Hero, the Companion, and the Villain. From there, we organized their features into a poster, which acted as our guide and storyboard to develop the game. At this stage, amazing creativity came to light. A young boy, in particular, drew stunning renditions of the Hero, the Companion, and the Villain in particular, who had a comedic weakness: he despised structures taller than himself. Again, this illustrates how, even within a fantasy setting, the children cleverly connected their stories to their reality.

Let’s learn how to code!

Nothing is better for introducing a child to the world of programming and logic than Scratch. Developed by MIT, this graphical programming language is the perfect tool to create simple games. After giving a few explanations on how it works, the students were excited to get their hands on it and start their tasks. I was particularly delighted to see N., a student who had previously been removed from the classroom for her behavior, now helping out her peers with their tasks after completing her own!

Let’s develop a mini-game!

We moved forward to bring our ideas to life and code the game “Zombie in Quinta Classe”. Our chosen mechanic was an endless runner, where the Hero and their Companion must dodge zombies and thorns whilst navigating Ponticelli and Vesuviana, with the help of friendly citizens.

Conclusion.

We wrapped up an incredible journey exploring a variety of topics with my students. I was especially proud of the creative solution we found to make the game available to everyone in the class — adding buttons with a bit of imperfect but clever code, so everyone could participate, even those without computers. It was amazing to discover the sheer talent and knowledge of the children — one even talked to me about Blender! I’m excited that this project can easily be repeated by any educator who has access to Scratch, meaning I’m leaving something beneficial not only for my students but for other teachers and educators too. I’m certain that, despite maybe not retaining all the details of our coding sessions, my students will remember the spirit of companionship we shared and I’m confident they’ll think more positively about their futures. I am hopeful that I encouraged the students to break away from the often limited expectations of their social group: the project's main goal was to provide the younger generation in Ponticelli with a new outlook on the future, allowing them to identify and boost their hidden skills by introducing them to STEM disciplines and allowing them to actually put them into practice. Step by step, this project aims to build a new vision of what the future holds for them, free from preconceived notions of their tough environment.

If you’ve read this far, thank you for your attention — and if you’re curious, I’d love for you to try out our game and let me and my students know what you think! Also, check out L’Albero della Vita for more information about their projects.