Social Justice in Games + Media
Social Justice in Games + Media
STEM for All + Fighting Bias & Racism & Bullying + Demystifying Mental Health
Embedded Files
*Bringing Code Theory to Diverse Youth
*Bringing Code Theory to Diverse Youth
The game Miner Madness, created by KCAD students was put into production in 2018, since then it has been a catalyst for educators to bring code theory to young learners across the globe.
Teaching Code Theory to Egyptian youth
Teaching Code Theory to Egyptian youth
Gamepact is a company in Egypt that does training in corporations using behavioral psychology and game design techniques to gamify learning. Gampact started using Miner Madness and Fun Funky Functions, created by my KCAD students, to train the youth of Egypt in Code Theory. This youth training experience will expand throughout the Middle East as a part of the Arab Revolution in Coding.
Teaching Code Theory to Tuscarora Nation youth
Teaching Code Theory to Tuscarora Nation youth
In 2018 the Miner Madness Dig Into Code Theory game won The most Meaningful Student Created Game. I gave this game to Concordia University, and University of Buffalo student, Waylon Wilson. He brought it back to his community cultural center to help kids from the Tuscarora Nation learn code theory.
*The Serious Play Conference:
*The Serious Play Conference:
A leadership conference for professionals who are exploring the use of game-based learning, sharing their experiences, and working together to shape the future of training and education.
The Miner Madness Game is being play-tested at Serious Play, with Peter Guenther of Terrence Learning, and Serious Games student at Michigan State University.
My Role: Judging Educational Games
My Role: Judging Educational Games
I have been a judge for the Serious Play Conference from 2017 - 2022.
I write reviews for the games I play test to share feedback on learning effectiveness, societal impact, playability, and meeting the audience's needs.
I have had the opportunity to play and user-test games in these categories:
Digital Entries: Professional
Digital Entries: Student
Tabletop/Board Game Learning Entries: Professional
Tabletop/Board Games Learning Entries: Student
Entry categories include:
K-12 Education
Higher Education
Healthcare/Medical
Museum/Visitor Centers
Corporate/Vocational
Military/Government/Military
PreK Education
Non-Profit
Meaningful Play
Meaningful Play
About the Meaningful Play Conference:
About the Meaningful Play Conference:
Meaningful Play is a conference about theory, research, and game design innovations, principles and practices. Meaningful Play brings scholars and industry professionals together to understand and improve upon games to entertain, inform, educate, and persuade in meaningful ways.
My Role:
My Role:
In 2022, I presented on collaborative game building with The Revolutionary War Card Game. We intentionally included diverse heroes and heroines like Crispus Attucks, Sayenqueraghta, and Margaret Shippen. The game mechanics lowered the effect of the historically mighty so that players could build winning decks with powerful minorities and common folk.
In 2018, Miner Madness won the most Meaningful Student created game of the year. This game was user tested and developed in diverse schools. Inclusive Optics is one of the ways this game promotes social justice, representing diverse youth in the game visuals.
Getting feedback from experts in the field like Casey O'Donnell and Hermione Banger of Affinity Games
I had and opportunity to experience virtual reality games by other universities and game companies
Game Students playing Miner Madness Game by KCAD students at Meaningful Play
*STEM Apps for Grades 5-9
*STEM Apps for Grades 5-9
I collaborated with Kenowa Hills Middle School to create apps published on the Apple Store.
These apps include a complete digital curriculum with review questions, practice quizzes, additional resources, and assessments.
Social justice was at the forefront of this project by bringing attention to climate change and the effect it has on The Next generation science concepts that were applied to these apps helped students to understand the effect humans have on the environment and the world's most vulnerable communities.
Survive Global Climate Change
Gamified App
Survive Global Climate Change
Gamified App
Character-driven storytelling covers a wide range of climate change causes and effects.
Battling Extinction
Gamified App
Battling Extinction
Gamified App
Character-driven storytelling covers a wide range of climate change causes and effects.
My Role:
My Role:
I produced these apps as a part of the Professional Studio courses at KCAD, teaching art, design, animation, science integration, and storytelling. I collaborated with Chris Brown, KCAD faculty, who developed the app template. Bill Fischer, KCAD faculty, and I led user testing in classrooms and community events.
Collaborators:
Collaborators:
60 6th-grade Science Students
30 8th-grade Science club Students
45 KCAD Art and Design Students
3 Middle School Science Teachers
3 KCAD Faculty
1 Kenowa Hills Middle School
1 District Curriculum Developer
*EPIC Heroes Fight Bias Animated Gifs
*EPIC Heroes Fight Bias Animated Gifs
About the Fighting Bias Project:
About the Fighting Bias Project:
These short animated gifs provide middle school teachers with support materials that can supplement lessons centered around Tolerance.org's Social Justice Standards. In the animated stories, implicit bias based on race, gender, religion, ableism, and ageism is confronted. Choosing to confront bigotry and hate takes heroic powers.
My Role:
My Role:
I produced this project in a sophomore-level course at KCAD, teaching students how to plan, storyboard, create images, animate, and create accessible designs available to those with visual and hearing impairments.
Collaborators
Collaborators
60 KCAD Animators
40 Middle School User Testers
2 KCAD Art and Design Faculty
1 KCAD Web Designer
Racial Bias an EPIC Animation by Juan Martinez
Animation Description:
Animation Description:
A store cashier stereotypes a person of color as a delinquent and then gets confronted for it.
Animation by: Juan Martinez
I relate to people as individuals and not representatives of groups, and I can name some common stereotypes I observe people using.
*Fighting Racism with Animations
*Fighting Racism with Animations
About the Fighting Racism Project:
About the Fighting Racism Project:
The Achieving Despite Resistance project is in collaboration with the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Ferris State University. We created motion-comic-style animations of black people, from history, that overcame obstacles to achieve success. The animations reside in the Jim Crow Museum's Virtual Tour, in the section called 'Achieving Despite Resistance'. They feature the stories of Rube Foster, Shirley Chisholm, Garrett Morgan, the Harlem Hellfighters, Leontyne Price, and Percival Prattis.
Universal Design methods were used for text and color contrast, visual narrative writing and color blindness so that people of all abilities could experience the media in the same place at the same time.
Social Media Images promoting the animations
The Harlem Hellfighters Achieving Despite Resistance, a story from World War I
(1:36-2:11)Collaborators
Collaborators
40 KCAD Art and Design Students
12 Expert reviewers for iterative feedback
6 Peoples stories from history
4 Jim Crow Museum Staff writing the history
3 KCAD Art and Design Faculty
1 Director of Ferris State University Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
My Role
My Role
With Professor Bill Fischer, I coproduced this project. We met with the museum, the director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at the University, and historians from the museum, to outline the goals of the project which was to bring attention to the Black Heroes within the museum and tell their stories as a part of American History. I created the style guide. We led a team of junior-level students to collaborate with the Jim Crow Museum. I designed images for the social media campaign. These students learned about collaboration, and the animation pipeline and experienced working with a real-world client.
3 Anti-Bullying Apps
3 Anti-Bullying Apps
Reel from The Story of Greg Louganis, Olympic Athlete, Overcoming Bullying, Animated Comic App
Collaborators:
Collaborators:
30 Kenowa Hills Elementary School Student User Testers
3 Full Anti-bullying Curricula
3 Experts on Diversity in Education
3 KCAD animators
3 KCAD Character Designers
3 KCAD Background Designers
1 Expert on Bullying
1 Principle of Kenowa Hills Central Elementary School
2 KCAD English Professors
1 KCAD Lead Art and Design faculty
1 Olympic Athlete
About the Anti-Bullying Apps:
About the Anti-Bullying Apps:
3 Animations were made by students, telling Greg Louganis's story of being bullied from the perspective of race, sexual orientation, and as a person with dyslexia.
My Role:
My Role:
I was the producer of these three animated comic apps about bullying. I saw the need in elementary schools for antibullying educational tools. I connected with Olympic Athlete, Greg Louganis, and his agent. I helped the KCAD students to understand the aspects of bullying that were needed in the classroom, and taught the imaging, interactive, and animation techniques in collaboration with my KCAD fellow faculty Chris Brown and Bill Fischer.
*Demystifying Mental Health in Social Media
*Demystifying Mental Health in Social Media
Creating the Mental Health America Social Media Campaign
About the Mental Health America Projects:
About the Mental Health America Projects:
A team of KCAD Professional Studio students, as part of The EPIC Project, created three animations for the Mental Health America Website: Life On Campus campaign on Anxiety, Bipolar and Depression.
They aim to compel people that suspect they have a mental illness to take a screening on the MHA website. Mental Health Screenings are MHA's most successful program and have compelled many people that suspect they may be suffering from a mental illness to seek treatment.
Students were introduced to a scientific understanding of the human brain and where mental health affects the brain with Dr. Ellie Caruthers leading a lesson.
Students learned about collaborating with a company via video conferencing and digital communication as we collaborated with the Marketing team from Mental Health America.
My Role:
My Role:
I taught KCAD Digital Art and Design students about accessibility and empathy through these 3 projects.
I was led learning in cross-disciplinary methods of film and animation.
I led the collaboration with Mental Health America and our field experts.
Collaborators:
Collaborators:
3 Student Teams created media on Anxiety, Bipolar and Depression
3 KCAD Faculty
15 KCAD student animators, sound designers, videographers, actors
5 Experts in Mental Health from Mental Health America
1 Social Media Expert form Mental Health America
2 Universal Design Experts
1 Brain Science Doctor who demystified Mental Health
1 Grand Rapids Poet Laureate who shared his struggle with Mental Health
1 Expert Developer and Person with Autism who helped us have empathy and create integrated captions for all
Fable the Poet, Grand Rapids Poet Laureate, and Diatribe Lead Teacher, inspired our students to tell their stories of struggling with mental health and finding ways to help others through thier voice.
Anxiety Screening Animation Pitch
The Anxiety Animation by KCAD students incorporated integrated captions and audio descriptions as a part of our Universal Design Initiative.
(0:21-2:54)Results:
Results:
KCAD's student work has been seen by thousands of people on social media platforms and helped many people to seek professional mental health help.
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