Alex Games, Ph.D., Education Design Director, Microsoft

Kodu, a game-based learning environment is designed to introduce children to computational thinking and programming, giving them identities as game designers within online communities. The presentation will discuss the way in which Kodu allows young learners to use their experience as gamers to explore the key computational principles, thinking, and activities in computer science and engineering that lie “under the hood” of modern videogames. Alex will present examples of how this model has been used in the context of after school programs, and the ways in which it promises to transform the way in which children engage with STEM, by allowing them to use games as a language that gives meaning and value to concepts that schools tend to present in academic and decontextualized ways. [Recorded April 17, 2012]