What a day . . . what a beautiful day!
Blog written by Jurriaan van Rijswijk – Games for Health Europe Foundation republished with permission.

This morning we started at 8:30 with briefing the course teachers for day 1 of the EduMaisGame Summer Course. At 9 o’clock the kids came in. 39 registered and 36 showed up! Amazing.

Diana and Henrique started with the rules of engagement together with the kids. No shouting, being respectful, walk not run and all the good and bad manners listed as does and don’ts.

Rules of engagement as a start of every EduMais Course.

Then of course to get to know each other we played. Physical and social play. And we changed the rules. A discovery where actually Brazilians are very good at.

Physical &  Social Play

After lunch we split the kids in groups where each group had to choose a game they love and a game they hate. This assignment was to make a structured analysis of how the game was constructed and designed to discover why it was a good versus a bad game. The next step was to generate ideas for improvements of the game that they hate.

Making EduMaisGames

Each team had to create a group name and a presentation of their findings. An important skill of Game Design is that you are able to share and present your ideas and thoughts.

We end the day with an exploration of the different roles the kids have an ambition for. Are you an artist, programmer, story writer, marketeer, producer, audio designer or game designer. Multidisciplinary teams are required for serious game design!

Different roles for game design

Traditionally every day of an EduMais course kids and teachers say goodbye, wish them a nice evening and night and telling them that we love to see them tomorrow morning. For many people still this is not the case. We are sad to hear that already one of the kids needs to resign because of a domestic. We are figuring out how he still would be able to attend.

The EduMaisGame course is being held at the location of Solar Meninos de Luz in the Favelas of Pavão-Pavãozinho & Cantagalo. A picturesque environment to make impact with serious games..