The organization 1125@Carleton is sparking the interest of women who are passionate about math and game development with their upcoming women-only event to promote women in the gaming industry.
The event, titled GLAMGames 2016, will take place from May 27-29 at Carleton, and is part of a challenge hosted by the European Network of Living Labs (ENoLL) to design games that educate players about mathematics. The event was founded by JamToday, according to Lois Frankel, the academic director of 1125@Carleton.
Participants, who must be over 18 years old, will be split up into teams and will have until 3 p.m. on May 29 to make their math-oriented gaming concepts come to life.
“We intend to have the games highlighted on the 1125@Carleton website and also the ENoLL OpenLiving Labs and JamToday websites as well,” Frankel said.
Frankel says 1125@Carleton will be sending the winning team to Montreal to showcase their game at the annual ENoLL OpenLiving Labs Conference.
The event supports women who are either interested in or already have careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. These occupational fields are known as STEM fields and are primarily dominated by men, Frankel said, leaving women underrepresented.
1125@Carleton has invited girls from grades six to eight to come to GLAMGames 2016 with their parents to give feedback to the teams on their gaming projects.
“One of the things that is important to 1125@Carleton is social innovation. We consider encouraging STEM awareness and capabilities in young girls as an important social innovation,” Frankel said.
Krista Shibata, leader of the Women in Technology Initiative and employee of IBM Canada, will also be speaking at the event.
“We spoke to Krista and she mentioned some of the reasons why she was interested in focusing on how girls grade six to eight are introduced to STEM activities,” said Isinsu Sakali, the GLAMGames coordinator. “She believes that it is around that age that girls establish their feelings towards math, and she says that during the time that girls are in high school, if they are discouraged from math it is really hard to bring back their interest in it.
Sakali said she hopes the event will change girls’ attitudes towards math so that they can pursue a STEM oriented career if they wish.
Christopher Martin, the principal of Marjorie Mills Public School in Longlac, Ontario, said some of the new activities and clubs the school offers promotes STEM-oriented education within the student body.
“We have an after-school program called Makerspace. It gives the students an opportunity to be creative and build their own projects,” Martin said. “We also have a coding club and have recently purchased four Sphero balls, which are essentially robots that students can manipulate using apps on their mobile devices.”
Martin added Coding Spheros have almost become like a sporting event, because schools are coming together to hold competitions with obstacle courses.
As for future events, Frankel said that if 1125@Carleton were to host another initiative similar to GLAMGames 2016, they “would like for the grade six to eight girls to be able to work with the game designers on a ratio of one to one, where they actually are taking the games further or developing new games entirely.”
