Teens and Science Game Design at #scienceFTW

The American Museum of Natural History is in the midst of running their first afterschool science card game program for teenagers (called #scienceFTW), and I’ve been delightedly following Barry Joseph’s reports on how it’s going. It’s not just that I’m really proud that they adopted both Bone Wars and Parasites Unleashed for the program – I’m impressed that they’ve gone beyond simply giving kids some science games and passive instruction about “what they’re teaching.” Instead, the teens in the program are learning to analyze game mechanics and graphic design, and think about how those elements can be used to convey information about science.  That experience in critical thinking should be helpful when they start to develop their own deck building games later in the program – they plan to build a pterosaur deck for the ever-versatile Phylo, as well as an original game prototype about museum scientists. And judging from the photos, they’re having a great time.