Youth leader joins hack-a-thon

UNESCO Aotearoa Youth Leader, Naheed Saeid spent last Friday in Wellington learning the art of game development. Here she feeds back on the session that was designed with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals in mind.

"Last Friday I had the privilege of attending a hack-a-thon/game design session run by Gamefroot, an organisation aiming to blur the line between game design and education. The session brought together education providers, game designers, students and anyone else interested in exploring the use of games in the education sector.

We spent the morning brainstorming and collaborating to come up with games centred around the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs). What made the day particularly interesting was navigating everyone’s different backgrounds, skillsets and priorities. Each of us came with our own visions for the day, so finding a way to integrate these such that our games had cohesive themes and goals was a fun learning experience.

With the UNSDGs guiding us, each group came up with their own unique take on the task at hand and it was amazing seeing everyone tapping into their silly sides to showcase their ideas.

One of the outcomes of the day was that Gamefroot would record and collect the ideas and turn that knowledge into resources for schools and to support students developing meaningful content using UN themes in the classroom. I look forward to seeing where our ideas end up!"