Schell Games had the opportunity to travel to Washington D.C. to participate in the 2019 Ed Games Expo at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. This was the second year the Expo was at the beautiful arts center, and it is the third time in a row that Schell Games participated. The team set up demonstrations of Happy Atoms and HoloLAB Champions during the two-day conference. There was even a showreel for the Expo, shared by the U.S. Department of Education.
Day 1- How the Game Was Made
The first day of the Expo saw over 1,000 students from Washington D.C. area schools. These students were not only able to demo games from over 70 developers and organizations, but they got first-hand looks from Ignite-like talks from developers. The talks were live-streamed from the Kennedy Center YouTube Channel, and can be accessed below.
The Demo station
The Schell Games team set up both games and were busy the entire time. The team introduced the games to dozens of new people, as well as entertained some familiar faces.
The team in the middle of setting up and testing
The girls from last year came back!
It was great to see @MomOfAllCapes and her lovely daughters again. Even though they have a set of Happy Atoms at home, they made it a point to come by the table! She also did a nice writeup on their Expo experience.
The team was very impressed with how engaged and thoughtful the students were during their visit. Both experiences were very popular. Two high school students were able to create the glucose molecule (C6H12O6) with no assistance.
Overall, Day 1 was a great success.
Day 2- Pre-Expo Sessions for Developers & the Public Expo
The second day of the Expo was incredibly interesting. As a new wrinkle for the conference, there were talks for developers and organizations attending the Expo before the public showcase began. It served as a nice way for the community to hear best practices and predictions for the future. Below are some of the notes the team gathered from the sessions they attended.
Welcome- Mark Schneider, Director, Institute of Education Sciences
Mark Schneider welcomed all the developers to the Expo and thanked the Kennedy Center for being such gracious hosts. It was nice to hear him speak about how excited he is for educational technology- and educational games, specifically- to get more mainstream. He mentioned how virtual reality could transform the way students learn, and how games have the power to make students grasp concepts like teamwork and cooperation more fluidly.
Distribution Partnerships and Platforms
Michelle Miller of Games + Learning moderated a very interesting panel about the state of distribution partnerships and how developers can and should foster relationships to get their games into schools and learning programs. The first question raised was, "What is the user journey for educators?" Michelle noted that from her experience, it seems to go along the line of:
Online, self-guided research --> A cursory search of reviews online and suggestions from other educators --> The purchasing process --> Partial to full implementation and (hopefully) system support
What problems or issues do parents, educators, and instructional support run into? The panel highlighted three big points: visibility, accessibility, and sustainability.
But while those issues are alive and well, so are the opportunities for ed games in the classroom.
Data from EdSurge, First Book, and EducationSuperHighway
Now some highlights from the panel:
- For schools and school districts, the 'buyer' is usually separated from the teacher and the learner. In their experience, the buyer is concerned about: 1) can the game(s) be cross-platform? 2) Is it web-based? or 3) Can it be K-12?
- Teachley has found success working with school districts with 5-25 schools. Even then, it is still about a two-year sales cycle.
- Instead of trying to supplement curriculum materials, another value-add to buyers could be curriculum integration.
- Some school districts or educators want to be able to control their own content within the game, so that can be challenging.
- Teachers and learners love certificates, especially if they can be printed.
- From their experience, administrators look at game usage, while teachers and direct support look deeper for lesson mastery and reporting
- Teachley found that teachers used games with reporting and measuring more than games without the analytic back-end, even if they don't use those tools.
It was a nice exchange of information, best practices, and pitfalls to avoid.
Funding/Business Models
Another obstacle for educational game companies is creating enough financial capital to stay around long enough for the games to be adopted in the classroom. This panel, moderated by Michelle Dervan of ReThink Education, talked about the investment and venture-capital landscape for edTech and educational games.
Highlights from this Panel:
- Venture Deals, by Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson is a great book for those looking for investment.
- The location of your business in relation to VC hotspots matter.
- Valuations are at an all-time high.
- Working with a VC means that "you're on a treadmill that you cannot get off."
(sidenote: are you trying to run a studio? CEO Jesse Schell gave a talk on Studio Management: You Can Do it! In the talk, he also highlights the different methods of funding your studio).
Discussion on Research
The last session the Schell Games team went to before having to set up for the Expo dealt with research. Jessica Tsang of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative provided some interesting points for those looking to complete randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and efficacy studies.
Highlights from the Panel:
- The importance of RCTs and studies for ed games is growing.
- Research and the results of the studies can bolster your games' marketing plan.
- Having a good infrastructure for research in place for your games makes for a better research study/partnership.
The panels and the discussions were insightful, and the team compiled a lot of good information to share with the company in Pittsburgh.
The Public Expo
The second day was just as busy on the Expo floor as the first. We got more people into HoloLAB Champions, and several organizations fell in love with Happy Atoms. The team was pleasantly surprised to see young future lab champions and chemists do so well with the experiences!
This young man got the highest score of the Expo!
Happy Atoms generated some nice news coverage, too. The WTOP station in D.C. covered the digital and physical chemistry modeling set, while STEMS did a video for their American Sign Language audience.
Conclusion
It was another successful Ed Games Expo. The Schell Games team loves to show off HoloLAB Champions and Happy Atoms, and are continually blown away when people come up to the booth to say that they have a set or the game at home. The Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is a beautiful venue, and perfect for an event that aims to entertain and delight future superstars in STEAM education.