By Sara Vogel

This Fall, dozens of middle and high schoolers are transforming into game designers as Global Kids’ signature program, Playing for Keeps, ramps up at schools around the city and at GK headquarters.

Students at the School for Human Rights in Flatbush, Global Neighborhood Secondary School in East Harlem, and I.S. 109 in East Flatbush have been taking a deep dive into the core elements of a game — creating their own games from found objects, hacking classics like Tic-Tac-Toe and Rock Paper Scissors, and designing, iterating and playtesting levels on Gamestar Mechanic software.

As part of a Department of Education initiative, Global Kids is working with educators at four “Digital Ready” high schools — Satellite Academy, Hudson High School for Learning Technologies, Academy of Innovative Technologies, and Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School — to align Citywide P4K curriculum to state learning standards; possibly allowing the 19 participating students to receive academic credit for creating serious games about global issues and facilitating workshops on game design back at their schools and at other venues.

Next steps for these students include creating game design documents to outline how they will integrate a global issue into the core elements of their games.

Check out the photos below for the highlights!