Teachers from the Green Free School inspires teachers from the introductory youth education FGU

The teachers and YfY-facilitators, Klara Andrés Rask and Ane Würtz Lauridsen, were the first to implement their game development courses in Denmark under the YfY-project pilot period. During a local YfY-meeting Klara and Ane shared their best practices and experiences with the two other YfY-facilitators, Anne Herholdt and Israfel Asbainza, from FGU Vestegnen. 

Among the ideas shared was the entrepreneurial approach to always have an authentic receiver. That inspired Anne to follow in the footsteps of the Green Free School and initiate a collaboration with the environmental organization, NOAH, as well. Yet the ladies from the Green Free School had more inspiration to give from their game development courses.  

Klara kickstarted their process by providing the youngster with a great map of the world. They had the world map on the wall and the youngsters researched climate changes in different countries and put it on the map. An idea that Anne from FGU Vestegnen got so inspired by that she decided to apply that as well. Both Klara and Ane made a great effort to secure the understanding of the topic before the actual game development phase. 

Klara taught the students about the newest COP21, climate politics, CO2 and global warming and she took her students to a zoological museum, in which they could explore the museum by means of a game-based learning app. She took a more international perspective, whereas Anne went more local and practical. For instance, her students analyzed leaves with a microscope in a local park. 

Although the students had been introduced to game design and game history. And although they had gone to Bastard Game Café twice to simply play and evaluate games, the students still needed to play a lot in order to really understand the diversity of games well. And in particular to be able to transform ideas into practice. It was a challenge to design a game based on a complex topic like climate change. Klara shared that challenge resulted in her students mostly making question and answer games.

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