Turning Teens into Teachers with GDevelop - Part 1

This is the 1st part of a series of 3 articles about kids teaching GDevelop to other kids. You can now read part 2 here and part 3 here.

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I started holding 3-4 workshops about GDevelop for kids ages 8-16 at our department Coding Pirates Lyngby. App 50 kids had been through an 8-10 hours course of making a simple platformer game so far. Some came straight from a Scratch intro course. This was a bit of a step up for them and hard at first, but letting them evolve individually, they all had a great experience succeeding with making the game. Getting the chance to be a part of their successes is a wonderful opportunity! Read about my first experience holding a GDevelop workshop here: Teacher testimonial.

How they reached this opportunity

Some kids chose the workshop again and again, also using their sparetime to make their own games. They actually got so good at it, achieving so much confidence, that they started chipping in and helping the other kids in the workshops, so we decided to give 2 of them, ages 14/15, the opportunity to hold their own GDevelop workshop this spring.

These 2 teens have had such a creative approach to making games from the get go, and a lot of questions on how-to for a lot of their ideas, so we have been searching answers on YouTube together and they had also been guided to use YouTube tutorials themselves, since their first workshop. By opening their doors to finding and molding their own features for their games as they wished, making them independent users, not afraid of trying out things themselves, they evolved so much confidence.

(Pictures of some Games made by them)

Making the material for the workshop - the game

The two teens had, among others, made a spaceship shooting game all on their own! Figuring out how to add extra extensions to the game settings like physics, health bar and making it mobile friendly e.g. By now they already achieved better navigation and more knowledge about the program than me, using it every day. The game was in other terms fully developed! But since they were to teach younger kids themselves, in only 8 hours total, I recommended that they make a duplicate of the game, so they could start simplifying that to teach from.

They ended up making it simple, with only one level to win. This so the participants in the workshop could work out how to add to it e.g. other levels, when finished, and how to make these accessible, themselves if wanted, with some guidance of course.

Guidance and planning

They had been prepping for the workshop for a few weeks. I had been giving them Tips and Tricks for holding a workshop for kids, such as:

• Having patience and taking it slow, step by step.
• Making sure they pass forward how important strucktur and order is when coding.
• Adding comments in their game along the way, for their sake and those in the workshop.
• Using folders to get a better overview, giving them an easier way to help debugging with the kids. One of GDevelops many neat features!
• Asking questions and guiding the kids towards the answers.
• Also guiding them how to seek answers themselves online.

We wanted it to be a good first time experience, so we started giving them the possibility to teach 3 kids making a game they created themselves. I was in the room, if they needed any assistance, other than that they were in charge.

To play the game, click HERE.

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Stay tuned for the next entry into the series! And if you'd like to know more about Maria's work with GDevelop in the classroom, you can read her first guest post here.