A Twine Workshop for sex educators and game designers
Capture your learners' attention with narrative video games, built specifically for sex education. In this hands-on workshop you'll learn how to create your own educational games.
Learn from industry-leading speakers
Practice new skills through practical design challenges
No prior coding experience needed
Registration has closed.
Digital games are an exciting medium with which to engage learners in sexual health topics. Educational games have educational value because they...
get learners invested when they make meaningful choices in the story.
can be played privately or shared and discussed in the classroom.
offer replayable role-playing situations, where players can experiment and learn from mistakes.
The question more educators should be asking themselves is, Why aren't I using games in my teaching?!
In this workshop, we'll prove that anyone can make a digital game for sex ed, using the low-code tool Twine. The workshop opens with theory, so you know why and how edugames work. Beyond a theoretical basis, you'll play in a short edugame to understand its potential firsthand. Then, you'll outline your own Twine games to use in your own practice, and receive feedback from edugames professionals.
A Twine game is a digital “choose your own adventure” story where players explore choices and consequences in written narrative, connected by a series of hyperlinks. These games are simple to distribute, meaning learners can engage with them outside the classroom if they wish. Twine games can be opened on phones, Chromebooks, internet browsers, or other computers, and they function just as smoothly.
We focus on text-only Twine games so that this workshop is accessible to newcomers. You don’t need to know how to code in order to participate fully in this workshop. From prior experience teaching Twine workshops, we know that anyone -- regardless of computer/tech literacy -- can learn to create Twine games in a matter of hours. While the workshop does require access to a laptop or computer, we are confident that the effort to have a device on-hand is worth what you'll be able to create with it.
We define Relationships and Sex Education as high quality teaching and learning that positively influences learners’ sexual health. At this workshop attendees will strive to create lessons that are sex positive, LGBTQ-inclusive, intersectional, and informed by medical/scientific research. We especially hope people outline games that are relevant to the learners they work with. As such, the whole world of sex education is open to outline a game about at this event.
Attendees might outline educational games about:
Pleasure education
Kink, BDSM
Online dating
Queer sex
Consensual non-monogamy
self-advocacy with medical professionals, parents, or partners
Abortion
Body image
Asexuality, aromanticism
Setting and respecting boundaries
Media literacy as it pertains to sex
The Classics like barrier use, birth control, prevention of sexually transmitted infections
And more!
Workshop Organizer
KB is an award-winning game designer and professor at the University of Southern California. She makes games for creative health and studies the efficacy and application of games for sexual health education. Additionally, KB runs the Pelvic Health Workshop at LA General Hospital, a class about pelvic floor dysfunction and other chronic pelvic pain conditions.
Workshop Organizer
Jon Lutz is a sex educator and award-winning game designer in Minneapolis, MN. Jon has taught sex ed professionally in schools, clinics, shelters, and the criminal punishment system since 2013. A specialist in edugames, he’s trained others at the International Edularp Conference, US National Sex Ed Conference, and PPFA’s Drawing Water from a Deeper Well.
Because the sex ed community is world-wide, having an online course is the best way to gather and connect a broad range of learners.
Online Venue
We'll host the workshop on the the video call platform Discord. If you have a concern about accessibility, please reach out to us via email or our discord server.
This workshop is for sexual health educators, teachers, trusted adults and caregivers, game designers -- or really anyone with a computer. However it shamelessly prioritizes the needs of current sex educators, since we want educators to leave with a game outline they can immediately start using.
People with experiences as a sex educator, ideally people who currently provide education to learners. Paid public health work is not a requirement: parenting, volunteering, and other forms of professional teaching are examples of valuable experience. This might include health teachers, GSA advisors, public health workers, sex therapists, and more.
People with interest in games design, ideally with some experience in design. Paid professional experience is not a requirement: a mod, a prototype, a half-built game are all examples of valuable design experience. This might include game design students, escape room creators, ttrpg designers, and more.
Shoot us a email at sexedgamejam@gmail.com, or hop into our discord server with questions.
Follow us on Facebook to stay up to date with us and witness our sweet sex ed memes.
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