Code your own game: A challenge for Primary Schools

What is rAn actually?

The rAn is a project funded by the Erasmus+ framework. It targets the European education and training community as a whole by fostering the enhancement of the proposed curriculum and tools. In primary education, for instance, a core concern is when and how to introduce such issues. This decision is important in order not to frighten children and young people, but to empower them to understand, critically engage with and tackle environmental change and natural phenomena. Educators at all levels will also need support and training to deliver quality education about complex, climate related topics in ways which are both relevant to local environmental, social and political contexts, and which meet wider educational targets (e.g. literacy, numeracy, citizenship).

The rAn project mainly aims to develop:

• A “natural disasters awareness kit” and a serious game that promote awareness of young people in the field of natural disasters and measures, tools and practices for either predicting/preventing or facing hazardous situations.
• Learning methodologies and best practices that promote "hands-on" experiential learning scenarios, critical thinking and problem-based learning. Such methods draw their content from real- world practices and needs, promote knowledge abstraction, encourage the deployment of state-of-the-art technological tools and methods. They tend to foster the creation of concrete representations for a plethora of science concepts (coding, , mathematics, mechanics etc.) through active role playing.
• Learning scenarios and puzzles that encourage either Computational Thinking (Coding, IoT) principles and processes as well as "smart", modern and responsible solutions for the aforementioned problem(s) in a digital environment

An active community of practice for teachers that will be interested in disseminating the aforementioned concepts, tools and practices among stakeholders that come from the field of education.

Competition rules

1. Each submission must feature one of the four Natural disasters (fires, storms, earthquakes and floods) as the main theme. 
2. Each game should be created with Scratch about awareness, prevention and preparedness on -at least- one of the four natural disasters that the project deals with. 
3. Needless to say, that teachers are asked to have a supportive role on the whole design and development of the game. Pupils themselves (in small groups) should be the main developers.

4. The games could be one-screen only, however we encourage the creators to develop more extensive scenarios with a maximum of 10 screens each. The scenarios should be catchy and simple to understand and the game should not be endless. There should be a main objective which, once fulfilled, the game should come to an end. The plot is necessary to end successfully or not at some point. The element of a countdown timer until the ending, would be a handy feature. 

5. The competition is open to students in primary schools all over Europe and why not worldwide.

6. The project must be created using Scratch, which can be downloaded for free at http://scratch.mit.edu. 

7. Entries from a school can only be accepted if the school has been registered by a teacher using the official registration form that you can find here.

8. A classroom can submit as many games as kids and their teacher like. Numerous entries from the same classroom should be about games created from teams of no more than 4 students each. This is because we want the teams to work on a collaborative basis and encourage interesting classroom projects and design thinking processes.

9. Entries can only be accepted if they have been uploaded to a school’s gallery, created by a teacher, on the Scratch website at http://scratch.mit.edu

10. Entries must be original works created by the team submitting the entry. “Remixed” games will not be accepted.

11. If your entry incorporates music, sound, text or images, you must own the rights to use that material otherwise please make use of royalty-free content and please declare this in the submission form.

12. The competition organizers reserve the right to disqualify any entry based on inappropriate or copyrighted content and any entries which do not adhere to the competition rules and guidelines. 

13. When an entry is submitted, permission is granted to the organizers of the competition to make unrestricted use of the entry in the future for publicity or educational purposes in the context of the rAn project. In such use, the organizers will make sure that the author/school is clearly acknowledged. 
14. Documentation of the design and development of each game is highly recommended. This can be done in various ways but a short report (2-5 pages at most) on the various stages of development through photos, children’s comments and teachers’ feedback on the whole experience will be a big plus for the final outcome.
15. Teachers are encouraged to submit games along with a relevant learning sheet regarding natural disasters awareness (written by the teachers, on learning sheet per game). The entry will gain extra bonus and the learning sheet will also be included in the final manual of the game with a relevant reference about each creator. Find more information about the learning sheets here.
16. Teachers and students will need to answer a short on-line questionnaire about their overall experience prior to and after developing the game. The questionnaire will be published on the project’s website (https://ranproject.eu/)

Judging criteria

The judging committee consists of University professors, experienced teachers, policy makers and software developers from 4 different countries, namely Greece, Portugal, Spain, UK. None of them is somehow affiliated or connected with any school or organization participating in the contest. A complete list of judges will be published soon on the contest’s website.

Each entry will be reviewed by a panel of judges. The judges will ground the judging process in a 1-5 grading scale. The committee will award a maximum of points for each of the following: 

The maximum points a game can earn are 40/40.

The decisions of the judging panel are final and no correspondence will be entered into. 

• Originality and creativity (Plagiarized entry will have deduction of marks) - up to 5 points
• Stimulating/Engaging (Fun to use) - up to 5 points
• Functionality and technical quality (Projects must make clever use of Scratch features. Games should be at least playable with no technical flaws and bugs)- up to 5 points
• Faithfulness to rAn’s specific purposes- up to 5 points
• Overall documentation and validation of each project - up to 5 points
• Ease of usage (Casual concept – no lengthy instructions needed)- up to 5points
• Engaging visuals - up to 5 points
• Educational added value and sustainability (Games that come along with a concrete learning sheet and accompanying activities, clearly explained objectives and coherent alignment and conformity with national curricula, will be considered of higher educational value. This means that such a game could be considered as a standalone educational tool integrated in a coherent educational scenario regarding awareness of children about natural disasters’ prevention and preparedness)

You can download the detailed Guidelines here.

When your game is ready don't forget to fill in the submission form.

The deadline for submissions is the 14th of March 2021