NHS CTIA Students And Their Pipeline To A Greener World

By Eliza Hallabeck

For the first time this year, Connecticut Technology Innovation Academy was offered at Newtown High School as a class instead of being an after school program, and the students in it are preparing themselves for two upcoming events.

“The quality of work is so much better, because of the additional class time,” said the class’s teacher Kristin Violette.

The students are eagerly awaiting May 8 and 9, when they will travel to the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford for a two-day event where they will present a game they developed for this year’s challenge to all Connecticut Technology Innovation Academy classes across the state. The game, GeoShock, was shaped around the challenge of creating a game that promotes a “green theme”; Newtown’s response was to program a game based around geothermal energy that incorporates a classic click and drag pipe game.

“This year the challenge was for students to create an educational game based on green technology or that actually introduces environmental responsibility or sustainable energy,” said Ms Violette.

GeoShock already won an award at Central Connecticut State University on March 13, when a group from the class attended workshop where 11 different groups submitted their answer to this year’s Connecticut Technology Innovation Academy challenge. By winning the award at that meeting, the NHS group was awarded a $150 Kinkos gift card to spend toward a booth being designed for the Expo on May 9.

The class, according to Ms Violette, started working on the challenge at the beginning of the school year. After brainstorming, “They came up with a bunch of different ideas.”

“Our original plan was to create a bunch of different small puzzle games based on different energies,” Ms Violette said. “So one puzzle game would be about geothermal, one would be on water conservation, etc. Then we were like, ‘Wow, this is too big of a scope.’”

After further deliberations, the students decided they needed a main character, and that was how Max Power entered the equation.

“Throughout the game Max Power will give you little educational tips about geothermal energy, like little facts,” Ms Violette said.

The class primarily focused on the 12 to 18 age group for its game, but the students also feel the game would be good for all ages. Ms Violette said everyone gets addicted to puzzle games. Since the creation of Max Power, the character has grown to have his own Facebook account and his own account on Twitter, http://m.twitter.com/maxx_power, among other things.

NHS junior Steve Rollo has been the main programmer for the last two years. He has been programming GeoShock in both PC and Mac versions. Steve said he is excited for the upcoming Expo, because he has been to two in the past couple years.

“You get to show your product to other people,” he said, “and really get some feedback.”

Ms Violette said the game’s goal is “to connect the pipes to reach the heat source at the Earth’s core before the water starts flowing through. So there’s a time element. There’s a money element. There’s a random pipe element, to add a sense of urgency and need to the game.”

Through creating and working on the project multiple students in the class said they learned a lot.

“I know a lot of about designing, building, engineering and kind of creation, so I am actually building the entire booth and running through pieces there,” said Timm Arnone, a junior at the school who was also in the program last year. “And if you know more about marketing, getting things done, you can go through and write the ideas for the game, or market the game or equipment.”

Timm said he has learned a lot about the marketing aspect of a game. And “how it’s not just the creation of the game that matters, but it’s how you try to sell the game.”

“You can’t just do things,” Timm said. “You have to follow procedures, and you can’t just do what you want to do. You have to discuss it with the rest of the group and work with them. So it’s been a really interesting way to learn about how the workplace would really work, and how everything gets done.”

Another junior, Jacey Johns, said she feels every student can learn from taking the class.

“I think it teaches you basically every skill you will need to know in the real world,” she said. “Like business management is learned, we have graphic designers, people who are learning to make video games, you learn to public speak, you learn how to cut things short.”

More than 20 schools will be participating in this year’s Expo at the Connecticut Convention Center, and Ms Violette said she is really thankful the program was turned into a class by the Board of Education this year. She said each of the class’s trips are also organized by the Center For 21st Century Skills at Education Connection.

A week after the students return from the Expo in Hartford, they will be participating in a Scratch Day at NHS for students from the high school, middle school and Reed Intermediate School. Scratch is a computer programming software that the high school students will be showing and discussing during the event, to be held on Saturday, May 16, from 10 am until 3 pm. The event is open to the public, but registration is needed in advance.

To register for the Scratch day contact Kristin Violette at the high school at violettek@newtown.k12.ct.us, Christina Welsh at the middle school at welshc@newtown.k12.ct.us, and Tim McGuire at Reed Intermediate School at mcguiret@newtown.k12.ct.us.