Scholastic Art & Writing Awards has just announced their National Winners and Finalists and I’m so pleased to say that several Globaloria students are 2015 winners for the Video Game Category! The Globaloria winners are Alexis Mondragon Martinez, Julio Anguiano, Marcelo Arpero and Isaac Shephard, who created the game, “All About The Solar System” in their Globaloria class at East Austin College Prep Academy (MLK) in Austin, TX and Edward Rinaldo from Herman Intermediate School, who created the game, “Quadractic Time”.

Since 1923, the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards have recognized the vision, ingenuity, and talent of our nation’s youth, and provided opportunities for creative teens to be celebrated. Each year, increasing numbers of teens participate in the program, and become a part of our community–young artists and writers, filmakers and photographers, poets, and sculptors, along with countless educators who support and encourage the creative process.I’m so proud of the accomplishments has made by learning computer science and expressing their creativity and skills through game design.

My company, Globaloria, co-sponsored the Austin Education Game Jam (March 7-14), a professional game development contest inspiring the creation of high quality and commercially viable video games for education. It was inspiring to see game developers make mobile and online games with education focus. This competition continues the White House Game Jam and President Obama’s vision that education should be fun, interactive, and always evolving with students’ needs. Scott Lipton (Network Director of South/Central, Globaloria) organized it in collaboration with Erik Martin (U.S. Department of Education, Office of Education Technology), Sean Duffy (Founder, EdTech Austin), Chelsea Biggerstaff (STEM Programs Coordinator, Skillpoint Alliance), Drew Scheberle (Senior Vice President, Austin Chamber of Commerce) and their fellow colleagues. The Austin Game Jam launch at Capital Factory. After a week, finalists and winners were announced at the Geek Stage of the Gaming Expo at SXSWInteractive. The Austin gaming community came together to participate in the development of new, high-quality games for education. Sharing events from the week that started at SXSWedu and ended at SXSWInteractive.

Good day #austin! Getting ready for #austineducationgamejam w @eriklaes of @OfficeofEdTech & @slipton of @globaloria pic.twitter.com/7YKvOQwNoe

— Idit Harel (@Idit) March 7, 2015

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It’s that time of the year again when everyone gathers for the biggest edtech event – SXSWedu! SXSWedu Conference and Festival fosters innovation in learning by hosting a diverse and energetic community of stakeholders from a variety of backgrounds in education. Held from March 9-12 this year, I was able to attend a variety of events and even got to invite students from local Globaloria programs in Austin to display their games at the SXSWedu Playground! So fortunate that I was able to attend great keynotes and presentations, and attend some really good events and gatherings, such as the GoogleFiber party and the Edutopia gathering. Highlight of the event for me was getting to meet Guy Kawasaki (Chief Evangelist of Canva, formerly Apple) promote his new book “Art of the Start 2.0“. I highly recommend reading it. As always, my congratulations to Ron Reed (Executive Producer, SXSWedu) and his team for putting on a great event! Here are some tweets from my SXSWedu 2015 experience!

The youngest game-coders in #Austin give demos at Playground #SXSWedu cc: @EdTechAustin @globaloria pic.twitter.com/YSpeF7yRT3

— Idit Harel (@Idit) March 9, 2015

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