Urban Culture and Constructing Video Games

In this paper we propose that combining urban culture with individual video game artifact creation leads to increased engagement in the instruction of computer programming to primary school students. Recent studies have examined the use of Scratch, a programming language developed by the LifeLong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab, with urban elementary school students as they design artifacts with urban cultural references and integrate these elements into their computer programming projects (Maloney, et al., 2008; Kafai, et al., 2007). Additional studies have examined the use of video game design and development to create individual interactive meaning-making spaces (Robison, 2008). In our proposed study fifth grade students develop their own video game artifacts through the combination of storyboards; game mechanics, design and development instruction; and computer programming lessons. Level of engagement is measured based on the frequency and complexity of Simple and Complex Conditional Statements (Fadjo et al., 2009a) implemented within the subjects’ video game artifacts.

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