Video game created by indigenous students to promote maths and science education
In March this year, AIE teamed up with AIME (Australian Indigenous Mentoring Experience) to mentor 18 Indigenous Year 9 students through the game development process. Students were tasked with creating a game that would promote science and maths education in schools, in an interactive and engaging way.
Four teams were mentored by AIE Game Design Teacher, James Betar as well as a number of AIE students, as they worked on their prototypes. At the end of the week, students came together at Google HQ to present their ideas to a large audience and panel of judges which included Hex, from Good Game.
This initiative was conceptualised off the back of AIME taking out the Google Impact Challenge where they were awarded a grant to put an educational game into development. The initiative has generated plenty of press amongst mainstream and games media outlets who are rapt with this incredibly cool opportunity.
And the best part of all? The Year 9 students get to make a game!
Manning Bancroft founded AIME in 2005, when he and 25 students at the University of Sydney began mentoring 25 Indigenous high school students in Redfern.
This year AIME is connecting approximately 6,000 mentees with 1,800 mentors across 37 locations and in partnership with 18 Australian universities. In 2014, 76 percent of AIME’s 365 Year 12 kids transitioned to university, employment or further training. This exceeds the national non-Indigenous rate of 75 percent 18-25 year-olds who transitioned to employment and further training, and the national Indigenous rate of 40 percent.