WATG 2019 Teen Conference

In our gifted classrooms, it is important to keep pace with the students to avoid boredom as well as to balance their skill learning with emotional development and activities of interest. One way to allow gifted teens to dig deeper into the issues that they care about is to use technology to encourage creative problem solving and create social awareness.​

On Friday, October 4, twenty-eight gifted teens from ten different school districts in WI participated in the WATG Teen Conference. It was truly fascinating to see these young researchers, artists, writers, programmers, and caring individuals team up to create online games and board games.

The creative process: Teams of students brainstormed a list of different issues that they cared about and voted for the top five topics. Then, each team worked to research one of the five topics. The goal was to design a video game that focused on building social awareness of their topic.To learn more about the rules and instructions of game play, the students played various board games. At the end, they presented their game idea to other participants. What a neat idea for students to build personal knowledge of their chosen topics and bring awareness through online games to change the world!

The five issues that the teens worked on are:
●      Civilian Casualties in War
●      Personal Safety and Bullying
●      Poverty
●      Pollution and Environment
●      Distribution of Wealth


A big thank you to Stacy Read, Web and Software instructor at Waukesha County Technical College for sharing her knowledge with these students! You can check out their game creations at:

https://itch.io/jam/watg-teen-conference-2019/entries