Tag Archives: artsed

My TEDx Talk Transcript: Let’s Make Games


Back in November '13 I gave a talk at TEDx Jersey City about the game design class I've been teaching to children in northern NJ. Below is the transcript of my talk, including some of the images I used to showcase the work of my students. Watch the video → See posts about individual classes → More →

Let’s Make Games: Board Game Quest


For our final class in "Let's Make Games" we created board games based on the idea of a quest. We spent a couple of Friday afternoons drawing a maze, creating playing pieces and dice, and developing a story for our game boards. Students created rules to follow and made short cuts and dangers. During our final class we had snacks and played our games together using 10 sided dice. It's been a fun trimester at HOLA and we've had a good time mixing art, design and craft to make enjoyable, colorful games. The kids created imaginative and decorative pieces and it's been a blast. I've loved having such enthusiastic creators and I know they've enjoyed the projects too. None of my students wanted to leave our last class! See more posts about this game design class →

Let’s Make Games: Picaria


Picaria is a two person game that originated from the Zuni or Pueblo Indians in the American Southwest. The play is similar to tic-tac-toe, but consists of two stages: laying down pieces, then moving them to try to form three in a row. It's a quick game and after the students finished creating and decorating their boards we all had an opportunity to play a few rounds. See more posts about this game design class →