Roblox is an insanely popular gaming platform for kids around the country. The sheer mention of Roblox around middle-schoolers is enough to get them excited.

It's a gaming platform that uses low-poly 3D graphics similar to Minecraft. There are hundreds (maybe thousands) of games to play within the Roblox universe, and all of them come with a social component, e.g. kids can talk to each other through the computer while playing online.

People can use Roblox's own platform to build games and publish them on their website, allowing any players from around the world to play them together.

This is called Roblox Studio, and it is a simplified game engine/3D developer platform with Roblox-specific features.

While it's easy to use by industry standards, it is still a challenge. However, if we get good enough at it, we can guide children through the creation.

Coding

Building a game on its own, even on an abstract level, would strengthen kids' algorithmic skillset, which is the key component to coding. But of course, there is a coding component to Roblox Studio. Roblox uses a programming language called Lua, which is based on C++. Obviously, this is way too complicated for kids to be expected to do, but if teachers have some working knowledge of it they can make modifications to students' work as needed.