My family recently played the cooperative board game Forbidden Island together — and we barely won! To succeed in Forbidden Island, teams of 2–4 work together to retrieve four treasures before a fictional island sinks — tile-by-tile — into the sea. The island sinks when “rising waters” cards are drawn, and can eliminate tiles from where players can land. (Complete rules are here.)

Unlike some board games, players do not compete for their own individual goals; instead, everyone has one common goal that everyone works to achieve. Also, each player is a specific Adventurer, and possesses unique abilities that other players lack. For example, the Pilot — and only the Pilot — can “fly” around to any game tile once per turn; the Messenger — and only the Messenger — can give Treasure Cards to other players. Other roles include: Engineer, Explorer, Diver, and Navigator.

Cooperative Play

Forbidden Island has spawned two sequels: Forbidden Desert and the newly published Forbidden Sky. I recently spoke to the game’s creator, Matt Leacock. In addition to the Forbidden series, Leacock designed Pandemic, a popular — and difficult — cooperative game about stemming global disease outbreaks. Leacock also co-designed several Pandemic sequels, including Pandemic Legacy Seasons 1 and 2, both considered by some to be the best board games of all time!

Cooperative board games actually quite rather competitive in nature, but instead of playing against other players, the goal is to work together, bringing everyone’s unique abilities, all to achieve a seemingly just out of reach goal. Leacock borrows the narrative device of “beat analysis,” where he “modulates hope and fear, anxiety and tension and release,” as he structures and escalates emotion. “The story is a byproduct of the action of the players,” he explained. “Players have agency how they move around, decisions they made, and the side effect is this experience you’ve share, that you concocted.” It’s not the game is telling you the story, like a movie with a lot of exposition. In a game, you experience the story.

Curious, I asked Leacock about meaningful roles in his games, and why they resonate so much with players. I began by sharing an anecdote with him about our son, and how he had this special superpower to move all around the island, and that he — and only he — had that ability. Interestingly, Leacock replied that toles only have meaning if he makes the game super hard to win. “You then have to take advantage of your special powers in order to win,” Leacock explained. “Players then have a sense of agency — that this is my thing, leave that for me.”

Many of Leacock’s games have dangerous and scary protagonists such as threats of disease outbreaks (Pandemic), drowning (Forbidden Island), or the danger of being buried alive in sand (Forbidden Desert). “But you are in a safe environment when you play,” Leacock acknowledged.

Leacock also refuses to water down the difficulty level of his games. After all, is a kid loses, so does everyone else at the table! “People think ‘kids’ game,’ and they think ‘easy.’ But kids will really surprise you with their resourcefulness,” he explained.

After all players win — or lose — families can talk about shared experience that merges afterwards, which can also encourage growth mindset from players. “They’ll just want to play it again,” he laughed.

Cooperative Play and Self-Regulation

For younger kids, Leacock designed Mole Rats in Space, a cooperative game for ages 7–12. The complexity of play is a bit simpler than the Forbidden or Pandemic series of games. It is sort of Chutes and Ladders on a mandala-shaped board. Here, there are no defined roles — except playing as a mole rat on a spaceship(!).

The social constructs of cooperative game play can teach self-regulation of behavior to young children, as children adjust their behavior to compensate for others around the game board. The systems of cooperative game play create a safe-to-fail environment, where players take risks together, and collectively experience consequences: both good and bad. In cooperative games, players jointly interpret the rulesets, too. “If they interpret a rule wrong, they do so together, so it can be less of a problem,” Leacock said. After all, who hasn’t played Monopoly “wrong,” or used house rules! If everyone is on the same team, then misinterpreting a rule isn’t a big deal.

Real-World Skills

Collaborative problem solving is a real-world skill important in professions. Further, cooperative games happen to embed the 4 C’s of 21st century learning — critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity — into meaningful play. “Kids learn how to communicate, cooperate, contribute ideas, strategize, challenge, and question,” Leacock said. “It’s the perfect theater or environment for shaping those types of skills.” For more on the 4 C’s, check out this video from Common Sense Education.

Image Courtesy of Wikimedia

How Cooperative Games Turn Kids into Superheroes! was originally published in Connected Parenting on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Are you ready for Roblox? You, as in the parent of a child who has probably been bugging you to sign them up for a Roblox account. As the parent of a child eager to design, build, and play games. As a parent who worries about keeping your child safe online.

5 Tech Parenting Superpowers

Raising healthy, engaged, creative kids in today’s connected world demands real tech parenting superpowers. Beyond being a digital hero with routines in place to manage family screen time, parents also act as curators, crossing guards, and creative problem solvers — choosing products, attending to their kids’ online safety, and helping their kids make the most of their time online.

You can find helpful guides to Roblox from trusted sources like Common Sense Media or watch how-to videos to help your child get started. Alternately, I’ve written this post to explain tech parenting superpowers you’ll need to help your family get the most out of the game.

By the end of this post you’ll have gained 5 tech parenting superpowers. You’ll be able to:

• Explain what Roblox is to other parents in a straightforward way.
• Know how to use Roblox’s tools and settings to maximize your child’s online safety.
• Understand why kids watch Roblox on YouTube.
• Know how Roblox’s scripting language gives kids practice in text-based coding.
• Understand how Robux work and what to watch out for.

Here’s how to:

1. Explain Roblox To Other Parents

Explaining Roblox to other parents can be easy if you stick to these three points:

• Roblox is not a game, per se. It is a massively multiplayer online game creation platform where kids can play games created by other Roblox users or create games of their own using a free, all-in-one building tool called Roblox Studio.
• The platform and the games created by players are multiplayer; this means players are in a virtual world space with lots of other players. Roblox includes many settings to manage how players interact, including chat filters and online moderators.
• All content in Roblox is created by users. This means that all varieties of creativity are on display, including some content that may be inappropriate for your child.

2. Maximize Your Child’s Online Safety

Google Roblox and a lot of what you’ll read relates to parental concerns about safety. Some posts warn parents off the platform entirely, while others take a more measured approach, urging parents to take advantage of Roblox’s parental controls, while also empowering kids to protect themselves. Learning how navigate Roblox’s parental controls and privacy settings offers a hands-on way to develop your online safety superpowers. You’ll not only learn a lot about how Roblox works, but will also gains skills you can pass along to your kids to help them develop good digital habits!

Roblox and Player Safety

Here’s what you need to know how Roblox manages player safety:

• Chat filters. Roblox uses filters to weed out bad words and other problematic language. This prevents inappropriate content and personally identifiable information from being visible on the site. Parents can disable or limit online chat, controlling which users your child can chat with. No chat means chat is disabled. Chat with friends limits chat to a list of users you approve. Without restrictions, users can chat with anyone on the site. Players under the age of 13 see and can say fewer words and phrases than players over the age of 13. Parents can add a PIN to their account which locks the account settings, keeping kids who might not be happy with the restrictions on their chat from resetting them. Click here to learn more about how to customize chat settings for your child.
• Human moderators. All user-uploaded images are reviewed by human moderators for inappropriate content before being posted. Moderators assist in proactively removing inappropriate content from chat.
• Curated lists. Parents can limit which games are available for play by their child through a curated list. This is done my enabling Account Restrictions in their account settings. Curating lists in collaboration with your child are a great way to learn more about your child’s interests, while also helping them to making choices that are age-appropriate.
• Reporting and blocking: Kid-friendly online communities are guided by a set of community rules linked to ways of dealing with violations of community norms. Roblox’s community rulesoutline expectations around player behavior, and actively encourage players to report inappropriate behavior. Learn how to report bad behavior and block users and make sure your child knows how to do it, too.

Managing In-game Communication

In addition to understanding the tools available inside of Roblox, its important to be on the alert and communicate with your child about their play. Common Sense Media recommends that you should coach your child not chat with people they don’t know (unless they can verify they’re actually a friend, or a friend of a friend, in real life) and to not accept private messages (PMs) from anyone they don’t know. They also recommend making sure “your child knows never to give away personal information, trust their instincts if someone makes them uncomfortable, and never move a conversation to a different platform (a telltale predator red flag).”

3. Demystify Why Kids Watch So Much Roblox On YouTube

I’ve written about why kids watch so many Minecraft videos, and the same holds true for Roblox. Watching Roblox videos can help kids stay in the loop of their social circle. Kids without a Roblox account can learn the lingo and connect to popular personalities of Roblox in ways that allow them to remain part of a fandom they share with their friends. In addition, How-To videos help kids learn how to use Roblox Studio and hone their game design skills by learning from experts.

4. Understand What Roblox Offers Kids Who Want to Learn to Code

Making games in Roblox is pretty straightforward. The platform comes with many ready-made templates that give beginners a place to start. But if your child wants to make a unique game, they’ll need to learn how to use Roblox’s scripting language, called Roblox Lua. Players use a drag-and-drop code editor to create custom actions, conditions, or game mechanics. In doing so they are exposed to programming concepts like loops, conditionals, arrays, and inheritance.

Roblox has a helpful player community and many resources, including a wiki, to help players learn Roblox scripting. I’ve found AlvinBlox to be one of the best. Like Legos or Minecraft, what kids can make is limited only by their imagination.

If you have a child that learns best in more structured environments, there are a number of organizations offering courses and camps in learning to code with Roblox. They include iD Tech, CodaKids, and Code Ninjas.

5. Be Aware of Robux and What to Watch Out For

Roblox uses an in-game currency called Robux. The currency is used for various in-game purchases, like outfits or animations, weapons or other tools, or unique abilities in games. There are a lot of different ways of getting Robux. The simplest (unfortunately) is to buy them straight out or get them as part of a paid subscription. Players can also trade for them with other players or even have someone donate them to you.

If this sounds confusing, it can be. Players who create games or digital items in Roblox can earn real money from their creations. They do so by charging people to play their games on the platform using Roblox, the game’s virtual currency, or by offering pay-as-you-go in-game purchases. This makes Robux pretty appealing to kids. In-app purchases are not a new model, but it is one parents need to understand is at play in Roblox.

You also need to know that Roblox uses a freemium/premium mode. The basic experience is free — players can play loads of games and download Roblox Studio. But if your child wants to explore all the platform has to offer, they’ll they’ll want to become a member of the Builders Club, which comes with additional features and a membership fee.

Digital Socializing

As a parent and advocate for the positive potential of gaming, I see the opportunity in platforms like Roblox and Minecraft. They can help kids (and parents) learn about the risks and benefits of playing with others online. Roblox games are multiplayer games. They are social. For many kids, playing on a Minecraft server or joining the Roblox community might be their first experience socializing with others online. Take advantage of the experience as a chance to level up your tech parenting superpowers and explore all Roblox has to offer.

A final detail: Roblox is available on PC, Mac, iOS, Android, Amazon Devices, and Xbox One.

Images courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Let Your Kid Play Roblox And Gain These 5 Tech Parenting Superpowers was originally published in Connected Parenting on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What example are you setting when you’re glued to Candy Crush or texting during dinner? Is your obsession with work at all hours destroying quality time with your kids? A growing chorus of voices are amping up the volume on distracted parenting. Has that guilt inducing memo landed in your inbox?

You’re not alone. And you’re not a horrible parent.

I’ve been interviewing tech savvy parents about how they manage gaming and digital media in their family lives. Past posts include why we should drop screen time rules, game time limits that work for real families, and how to make gaming time into family time.

It’s not just about managing our kids. Experts agree that parents need to set a good example. But just piling on the guilt is not particularly helpful. Here I review some research, then share what I learned about what makes parents digital heroes. They practice empathy not hypocrisy, value routines over rules, and embrace joy more than guilt.

Distracted Parenting or Parent Shaming?

According to Common Sense Media, parents of teens and tweens engage with media at about the same rates as their kids, an average of 9 hours a day. The same survey also indicates that 78% of us think we are good media role models. Most parents seem pretty comfortable being just as engaged with devices as teenagers.

But media coverage seems intent on ratcheting up our anxiety levels. A recent headline in The Atlantic screams, “The Dangers of Distracted Parenting. When it comes to children’s development, parents should worry less about kids’ screen time — and more about their own.” Common Sense Media has been mobilizing for “device free dinners,” including a TV spot on distracted parenting.

In my family, mobile phones and Alexa are a regular feature of our family dinners. I subscribe to a “no tolerance for ignorance” policy when we debate issues. We look up facts on Wikipedia to back our assertions. We ask Alexa for the weather report when discussing our weekend plans. We share photos off our phones of what we did that day. Does that make me a distracted parent?

In The Art of Screen Time, Anya Kamenetz devotes a whole chapter on reviewing the research on devices and distracted parenting. She concludes that the research is limited and inconclusive as to whether devices in the hands of parents are net negative for families. Family backgrounds, routines, and specific situations are much too variable to make blanket claims. She is crystal clear on one point though:

What we can definitively say is that the practice of publicly blaming, shaming, and policing mothers — by the scientific community, the media, and society at large — is well established and far predates the advent of any digital technology.

Today’s outcry over distracted parenting can shade into unhelpful parent shaming. So let’s drop the finger wagging and technology blaming, and look at what actually works for real families having fun together.

Empathy Over Hypocrisy

Amy Jo Kim is a game designer, an expert in all things digital, and author of Game Thinking, a new book distilling proven strategies for designing great products. She’s also mom to an 11-year-old daughter who loves games, dancing, and their dog. Her daughter gave her a plaque for mother’s day that says “Don’t be so busy earning a living that you forget to create a life.” Amy Jo laughs. “She gave me that plaque with the sweetest smile and I said ‘Wow, that’s sweet, kind of.’” The subtext was “Oh mom, that’s just a lovely gift for you to remind you how great it is to really have a life, mom, who never closes her computer.”

Amy Jo and her daughter have a relationship that allows for this kind of honest exchange. When describing how their family manages games and media, Amy Jo starts with reflection on her own habits. “I’ll be honest. When we go to the gym, it’s as much about getting me off the computer as to get her off…I would like to be off the computer more.” She translates her struggles with time management to empathy for her daughter. “We’re not watching the clock. I don’t want to be a hypocrite. You know, if she wants to watch a video and she gets her room clean, I don’t want to police that…. I don’t just say shut your computer and sit there. It’s like, what’s the thing I would like to do?”

Routines Over Rules

Even tech-loving parents aren’t immune from guilt over distracted parenting. Steve Isaacs, a Minecraft educator, organizer of Minefaire, and gamer dad muses, “I believe society says there should be more structure and rules, and I either don’t agree or am a bit lax. The important part is that for me when my daughter brings to my attention that I am paying more attention to my phone, I try to honor that.” He doesn’t have hard rules about devices, but instead has family routines where media helps him stay connected with his daughters, aged 15 and 18. “One of our nice routines is that we lay down and watch an episode of a show we’re enjoying.”

Amy Jo describes how she sets up “self-regulating systems and habits” so she doesn’t have to rely on rules and monitoring. “That’s part of why we got the dog. You have to go walk the dog. You can’t be on your screens… if there’s a binge there’s a binge. Then there’s healthy things like go to the gym or take the dog for a walk. So break it up.” She models this same approach in her own life, and her daughter has come to mirror it. “She self-manages a lot.”

Tara Brown, tech entrepreneur and co-founder of Connected Camps has a breakfast routine where she sorts out with her eight year-old son what their day is going to look like. This includes discussing what is important, like personal hygiene, healthy eating, and other responsibilities, and making a list of things for him to accomplish for the day. “I used to make the list for him. We would discuss it, but I would write it down for him. It works better that he’s writing it. He knows what he needs to do.” Last summer they had a different process where he earned points for screen time. It worked, but “It was so much work for us to manage…. I couldn’t take it anymore.”

The key is that parents felt happier and more in synch when they have shared rituals and routines and weren’t having to monitor and enforce rules. Jim Pike, another leading Minecraft educator sums it up. “The second we start putting on rules, it’s going to make everyone’s life more difficult.” Just as Amy Jo’s daughter reminds her of what makes for a meaningful life, Jim’s seven-year-old son also helps him prioritize. “He’ll catch me. He’ll say, ‘Dad, you’re supposed get off now. It’s dinner time.’”

Joy Over Guilt

Amy Jo reflects on her own strategies for maintaining a healthy balance and getting off the computer. “I give myself a bright shiny object” like going to the gym. If the family needs to clean the house, they’ll play loud music and give themselves twenty minutes to see what they can accomplish.” Housework and exercise can be joyful, not a bitter pill. And every once in a while they will binge on a series of movies or a game. “When it’s Zelda, all bets are off.”

Just like it might take a little pep talk or a new workout outfit to get us out to the gym, kids might also need a reminder of how fun non-gaming activities are. Tara notes how her son loves games, but he also likes a lot of other activities like baking and gardening. “He has to be reminded that these are things he likes to do.” Their daily list helps with that, as does Tara’s own commitment to maintaining a healthy balance of activities herself. Tara is most into reading these days, and her son is also an avid reader. They read together every night.

Jim says, “If I notice that my kids are on YouTube way too long, I’ll suggest another activity that I know they like better. We’ll go to the park, or go on a Poke-walk, or play a board game…. We’ll bust out the Legos or Beyblades.” Jim’s joyful enthusiasm for all these activities is infectious. It’s no wonder he’s a digital hero for his students as well as his own children.

How to Shed Distracted Parenting Guilt and Transform into a Digital Hero was originally published in Connected Parenting on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Kids are natural game designers. Our son, age 7, is constantly making games. At restaurants while waiting to order, he hacks the games on the placemats, adding rules to tic-tac-toe, sometimes changing the grid altogether.

He also likes to design games on his iPad, including on coding apps like ScratchJR and The Foos. He also builds mini-games in Minecraft’s Creative Mode for me and my wife to play (we join his “world” using our smartphones).

Some games on his iPad include level editors, enabling him to use a simple drag-and-drop interface to build on and share game levels. His favorite is the level editor in the popular arcade-style, side-scrolling Geometry Dash. It is fascinating and powerful to see him fast prototype, and then test and iterate. As a family, my wife and I playtest his levels, too, and then offer positive feedback.

Game Design as a Family Activity

At a games and education conference, I attended Sycamore School’s A.J. Webster and Christy Durham’s workshop on reskinning the commercial card game Fluxx, which has dozens of versions — from Batman Fluxx to Math Fluxx to Doctor Who Fluxx. To play, you collect “Keeper” cards, and play “Goal” cards, which is for the group. In Batman Fluxx, if you have collected the Batmobile and Joker Keeper cards, and the Goal card is “The Joker Got Away,” then you win! The caveat, though, is that there are 28 different Goal cards — hence, the game’s goal is always in flux!

Games have a design grammar. Reskinning means changing the “nouns” of games; modding and hacking often pertain to altering the “verbs” of games, like the rules or game actions. For example, Disney HedBanz is a reskinning of the reverse charades game HedBanz: the game is the same, just the theme on the cards change. Other reskinned games include all of the versions of Monopoly that are available, as well as the different LEGO video games, from LEGO Harry Potter to LEGO Star Wars games — each of which is essentially the same game, just with different storylines and characters. In fact, as Webster and Durham explained it, any game with multiple versions can be reskinned to fit educational content.

And, as it happened, when our son was 5, he saw me preparing blank Fluxx cards for a lesson. He then asked me for some blank cards so he could also make a deck. To this day he still prefers to play his Fluxx game to the original!

Badges and Patches

This year, my wife and I — like many — got our son involved in a local Cub Scout pack. Curious about the different possible badges available, I discovered that the Boy Scouts of America, for older children (typically, age 11), has a Game Design Badge (badge requirements here)!

I contacted veteran game designer David Mullich to learn more about the Boy Scout merit badge. Mullich had been part of the team that created the badge back in 2013. “With the Boy Scout Game Design Merit Badge, the goal is for scouts to understand certain terms like multiplayer, genre, play value,” he said. “Boy Scouts who pursue this badge learn the iterative process of game design, where they come up with a prototype, playtest it with peers, observe the session, analyze the results, then do it over again: prototype again, playtest, observe. This gets them used to the idea that game designers create not to satisfy themselves, but really to understand what makes a game fun for others to play.”

The Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles also has a program to engage girls who are interested in making games. I spoke with Amy Allison, Vice President of Women in Games International (WIGI), and cocreator of the Video Game Design Patch, about the requirements.

“It is a four-hour optional experience that kids sign up for, currently just in L.A.,” Allison explained. “It is for girls who are juniors and cadets, ages 9–12, and the instruction includes 2-hours of playful and physical instruction, including building games on Gamestar Mechanic, from E-Line Media. It is a cool option under their STEM curriculum.”

The second half of the girls’ day is devoted to a career element, where women video game professionals field questions from the scouts about the industry. “A lot of the ‘light bulb moments’ occur when these kids learn the complexities about making games. They just assume games are made by one person.” Attendees quickly learn about game animation, as well as the different platforms and engines. “It opens a lot of different career options. It’s not just, ‘Be a programmer and make games.’ No, you could be a lawyer for games, or an artist, or a story director, a narrative writer. The girls usually say, ‘Oh! I didn’t know so many people were involved, and ‘So pieces need to work together.’ That is the biggest ah-ha moment we often have.”

Youth-Focused Game Jams

Similar to the experiences of scouts, game jams are events where youth can gather to creatively design games based on given themes. Game jams are sometimes held on college campuses, as well as at informal learning spaces such as in libraries and museums, and in afterschool clubs.

Along with the nonprofit Games for Change, we ran a series of “moveable” game jams (hosted at several locations, therefore: moveable) on topics of immigration, climate change, and future cities. While there, many parents stuck around, watching their children design games, and then later played those games. In fact, at one event held at a branch of the New York Public Library, parents were brought to a separate room and were tasked with building an escape room breakout game for their children to play at the end of the day!

These sorts of youth-driven game jam events can be organized so anyone with little or no prior game design experience can engage in meaningful learning in just a few hours. While there, kids learn 21st century skills like systems thinking, design thinking, and creative problem solving. Coding is often taught as a means to an end, as participants bring their own interests and passions to making games. After all, good games may require artists and storytellers, as well as game coders!

All of our game jam resources are available for free here: http://bit.ly/GJGuide, and can be readily adapted to family time activities. Also, this summer, youth aged 12–17 can participate in the inaugural Global Game Jam Next. To learn more, visit: https://ggjnext.org.

Image courtesy pxhere.

How Making Games Can Connect Kids to Community was originally published in Connected Parenting on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The number of families who choose to homeschool their children has steadily risen since the late 1990’s, and the Internet may have something to do with it.

Online resources and connectivity provide unprecedented support to deliver a quality education at home. This gives more parents the support and confidence to take charge of their children’s learning.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) the percentage of homeschooled children nearly doubled from 1.7% in 1999 to 3.3% in 2017. This increase also marks a growing diversity in the homeschooling population, and includes more kids who are gifted or have special needs.

Wired for Homeschool Success

When Janie Gwinup’s daughter daughter Elizabeth was diagnosed as profoundly gifted (PG), the family explored homeschooling as an option. “She was already way above of her age level in academics, and we wanted to plant our family values and religious faith in her at home. We also wanted to tailor her path to fit to her educational, emotional, and social needs,” said Gwinup.

But keeping the active mind of an exceptionally intelligent child stimulated is a demanding task for a parent-teacher. That’s why the availability of online resources factored largely in the Gwinup’s decision.

“Having internet access played a significant part into our decision to homeschool her,” said Gwinup. “We live in a small city, so it was not easy for us to find like-minded friends. She was the one and only youth MENSA member in our city. Even though we participated in local homeschool co-ops and field trips, I found that she still needed to be connected to PG kids like her,” said Gwinup.

Support for Families

Wired homeschooling families now have access to vast learning resources, and can transcend geographic limitations to network with other kids and families around the world. They can also access online course, subject-matter experts, tutors, language exchange sites, and free online lesson services, like Khan Academy. Resourceful parents can leverage connectivity to curate a dynamic curriculum that fits a child’s unique interests, abilities, and learning style, a level of differentiated instruction which would be hard to duplicate in a traditional public school.

By researching on the web, the Gwinups discovered and joined the Davidson Young Scholar program, a philanthropic initiative designed to support profoundly gifted youth and families. This allowed Elizabeth to connect with other PG kids on discussion forums, participate in seminars, and access targeted learning resources. Through the program, the Gwinups were able to consult experts in diverse fields, and also share experiences with other families who were raising profoundly gifted children.

When Elizabeth became curious about Minecraft and coding, Gwinup wanted to be encouraging, but also recognized her own limitations in those areas.

“Like any other parents, we wanted to support our child’s interest. Last summer, her cousin introduced her to Minecraft, and we were trying to find proper opportunities for her to explore and pursue her interest. I tried to do Scratch with her using Scratch workbooks at home, but I realized it would take experts to help,” said Gwinup.

Connected Tutoring

A consultant at Davidson Young Scholar recommended Connected Camps, which Elizabeth joined and participated in a number of Summer Camps and Afterschool Lab programs to explore her newfound passions for building and coding.

“It has been great for her to learn and share her thoughts and ideas with campers, and professional and friendly moderators. Participating at the camps gave her further opportunities to experience group work with different age groups,” said Gwinup.

As Elizabeth’s proficiency grew, the family thought she would benefit from one-to-one mentoring. She was paired with Luke Lohden, who had been her counselor in the Scratch coding camp. To optimize the personalized learning experience, Lohden reached out to Elizabeth’s parents to work out how to tailor the program to her specific needs. Under his tutelage, she explored engineering with redstone, game design, programming in Scratch, and programming in Minecraft.

“My objective was to help her find her goals and aspirations for what she wanted to learn and light the way for her,” said Lohden. “Over the course of multiple weekly sessions we created red stone machines, adventure maps, programmed automated factories, and created many games and animations.”

Personalized Support

Lohden’s ability to work with Elizabeth in a dedicated manner highlights one of the great benefits of homeschooling children in the digital age. No longer bound to the kitchen table, parents can reach out across the ether to assemble a virtual faculty for their child. And, despite the distance, kids can still enjoy the nurturing and personalized support that characterizes the best teachers-student relationships.

“I watched Elizabeth develop a firmer understanding of the concepts,” said Lohden. “For example, at the start, I would guide her through each step involved in building a for-loop through code. After a few sessions, I would instead just say to create a for-loop and she would. Until finally, after enough work, she was able to identify when she’d need to use for-loops on her own without my guidance. Over the course of our sessions I found myself stepping in to lend a hand less and less as she grew more confident and independent.”

It quickly became apparent to Lohden that Elizabeth had a passion for storytelling, so he helped her direct her coding projects to nourish her narrative interests.

“When coding programs for turtles, they couldn’t simply be coded to complete a task alone. They existed in a context. Together, over the course of multiple sessions, we built a ‘Turtle Town’ and every turtle denizen had a role and a personality,” said Lohden.

The specialized attention received by Elizabeth from her online mentor leveraged her passions and interests to help her learn new skills. While teaching their daughter at home, the Gwinups can transcend their own instructional capacity to provide a rich, varied, and highly individualized education for their child.

“Honestly, I can’t tell how much she has learned because neither my husband nor I can follow all of the things she can do anymore,” said Gwinup.

Photo courtesy jimmihomeschoolmom on flickr.

How Homeschool Mentors Support Gifted Homeschoolers was originally published in Connected Parenting on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Managing gaming time is a big challenge for many parents. In an earlier post, I examined what the experts say about setting game time limits versus the realities of raising young gamers. Here, I review the research on playing games with your kids, talk to three game-savvy parents, and reflect on my own parenting experiences to gauge how gaming with kids does or doesn’t work out in real life.

You Should Be Playing Games With Your Kids

Experts agree that it’s good for parents to engage in media together with their kids. Researchers recommend that parents “co-view” TV with their kids to boost learning and ward off negative media messages. This applies to digital media and games too, and researchers advocate for “joint media engagement.” Canada’s Center for Digital and Media Literacy says parents should talk to their kids about games, and play together.

Playing games with your kids is also good for family bonding and expanding the learning potential of games. Researchers Elisabeth Hayes and Sinem Siyahhan at Arizona State University have studied how parents gaming with their kids can promote positive relationships and critical thinking skills. They’ve created a series of “impact guides” to help parents maximize the learning potential of a range of commercial games.

But not all parents are into games, and keeping up with our kids is nearly impossible, especially as they grow older. Plus, learning how to play and get good at today’s games is a huge investment of time. The recommendation to play games with your kids is yet another thing we can feel guilty about.

Don’t despair. I learned from my parent friends that there’s more than one way you can bond with your kids through games. It’s great if you can play together, but you can also cheerlead, support, and compromise.

Play Together

After dinner, the homework is done. Let’s play some games and have some bonding time! I could either go get locked up in the things I’d like to do, or I could use this time as an opportunity to play with my kids. And that’s how I view our gaming time, as family time.

Jim Pike is an elementary school science teacher and a Minecraft educator. He didn’t get into games until he was 33 years old, when he met some folks running a Minecraft summer camp. He had a revelation. “I can teach math with this! As a teacher, I saw the power of Minecraft and that’s how I got into it.” These days he shares his enthusiasm for Minecraft with his students as well as his seven-year-old son. It’s their favorite thing to do together. He also sees his son learning engineering, design, and coding with Minecraft. “We don’t have any big screen time battles. When they’re on screens, we like to interact with them.”

Jim is doing what the experts say parents should do with media and games. He guides his son to good games and ways of playing that embody his values as a parent and educator. He also plays with his kids and draws out the learning potential. It doesn’t hurt that he’s passionate about Minecraf and is an experienced Minecraft teacher. I last spotted his son teaching math and engineering to other kids at Minefaire LA. Jim validates everything the experts say about the benefits of playing games with your kids.

Are you a game enthusiast with kids who share a passion for good games? Do you geek out with your kids on Minecraft? Yay! Count your blessings and game on. But what if you’re not particularly interested in games? Would you rather spend your evening curled up with a book or having a family movie night? What if your kids don’t like Minecraft? Keep reading.

Cheerlead

Both my son and daughter grew up playing basketball. Though I was new to the game, I was a dutiful basketball mom. I drove them all over Southern California on the weekends, learned the basics, and cheered them on. Then one day I had to participate in a mommy-daughter basketball game at our community center. Ugh. My guess is that this is how many parents feel when experts say you should be playing video games with your kids.

My son, an avid gamer, is a senior in high school. His game of the moment is Dota, a ridiculously difficult multiplayer online game that I can barely follow, and definitely can’t play. Other than the occasional board game, the last games we played together were Warcraft and Guitar Hero over six years ago. When he started playing Starcraft and Minecraft in middle school, I tried to play with him, but we both got frustrated with my lack of skills and commitment. I don’t have the dexterity to play either game well, and too much Minecraft makes me seasick.

As he grew older, I moved away from playing games with my son to becoming a spectator and cheerleader. As I’ve written elsewhere, he taught me most of what I know about Minecraft, and helped launch Connected Camps as one of our first volunteer counselors. I’m proud of his gaming achievements, like when he built a redstone calculator or climbed the ladder in Starcraft II. I credit gaming for his interest in tech and his decision to pursue a major and career in software engineering. Even though I can’t play the games he is passionate about, I try to keep up as best I can, and cheer him on when good things happen.

Support

“I don’t feel like playing Minecraft right now,” says Tara Brown, co-founder of Connected Camps, and mom to an eight year old Minecraft enthusiast. “I’m just reading a lot.” Unlike me, Tara is quite competent with Minecraft, but she’s not passionate about gaming. Her husband is more likely to geek out with their son on games. “I just get bored of the games. They’re way more committed.”

Despite her lack of personal enthusiasm about Minecraft, Tara supports her son’s interest, and she’s proud of his awesome builds. He engineers with redstone and pistons. After reading the Percy Jackson book series, he built giant versions of the books’ greek gods in Minecraft.

Compromise

Compromise

“I feel like a failure because I’m the one dad who wants to play games with my kids but they won’t.” Like Jim, Steve Isaacs is a Minecraft educator and enthusiast, and is the driving force behind the massive Minecraft fan event, Minefaire. He is a serious gamer who would have been able to keep up with my son as he moved on to Starcraft and Dota. But his two daughters, aged 15 and 18, don’t share his enthusiasm for games.

When his daughters were younger, they played Rock Band and Mario Kart together, and his younger daughter had a Minecraft phase. These days she’s more into YouTube and creating videos, and when they play together it’s most likely going to be card games. Steve describes card game nights as “high quality family time.” He’s given up on getting his girls into his games, and bonding time means watching TV shows together. “I’m a pushover. I’ll defer to whatever they want to watch.” He’s watching The Office with his younger daughter. I met her when she was supporting her dad’s interests and moderating a panel we were on at Minefaire LA. Clearly the father daughter bond is strong.

Even though Steve and his daughters have different tastes in entertainment, they find common ground. Family bonding more often than not involves compromise. “If my daughter gets in to ballet, I’ll get in to ballet, too” says Jim, though he prefers hockey and baseball. My son will watch an occasional movie or go surfing with mom and dad even when he’d rather be in a Dota match. And Tara is on the verge of jumping back in to Minecraft to make her son happy.

Even if you’re not playing games with your kids, there’s plenty of ways that media can be a way to bond as a family.

This just in: Jim will be advising Connected Camps on new programming for our labs!

Images courtesy pixabay, ExpectGrain on flickr, and Connected Camps

How to Make Gaming Time Family Time was originally published in Connected Parenting on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

My kids are only toddlers but I recognize how critical it will be for me to teach them how to handle conflict more effectively. According to a number of studies, learning how to resolve conflict, either between siblings or peers helps kids cope with other kinds of stress. It makes them better adjusted and more resilient as teenagers — and more successful as adults. But research also shows most kids don’t know how to settle disputes constructively. One exhaustive study showed the following: left to their own devices, 90% of conflicts between elementary school children go unresolved or end destructively. Most kids shun conflict or try to crush their opposition; more than 60% rely on adults to resolve their conflicts.

Research shows kids experience conflict once every three minutes. Given how prevalent conflict is among kids playing with others, what might this research mean for online gaming? Players report that antisocial behavior is the least favorite aspect of online play, and can have lasting effects. For example, data suggests that League of Legends players who experience bad in-game behavior are up to 320% more likely to quit playing the game.

I’ve written about some of the life skills that parents can nurture through Minecraft, including teamwork, strategic communication, and recovery from failure. I’ve also shared research on some of the prosocial benefits of playing games with others. Is there a role for a game like Minecraft to play in teaching kids to resolve conflict productively? Can a game like Minecraft help us raise a generation of “good” gamers?

Crafting Conflict

Minecraft, like all games, incorporates conflict as a key element of game play. In multiplayer survival mode players must compete over resources and learn how to work together. Even in creative mode, players experience conflict as they work within the constraints of the world. The game allows some things (upside down mobs) and disallows others (blocks cannot be broken by swords). When Minecraft is played on a multiplayer server, social conflict is inevitable. This is especially true when kids are trying to work together. Conflict is both a present and necessary aspect of cooperative efforts: players may agree on the goals, but be in conflict over how to reach them. Further, when kids are new to a server, they can get themselves into trouble by inadvertently taking another player’s items or by accidentally destroying someone else’s build.

Moderating Minecraft

Two years ago Connected Camps, in collaboration with researcher Petr Slovak and Committee for Children, began to explore how kids were resolving conflict on our servers. We had many safeguards in place to ensure that the server was kid-friendly. But we wondered if there was more we could do to help kids level up their social and communication skills.

After months of research we found that there were several things we could do to better support socio-emotional learning (SEL) in our programs. One change we made was in the way our online counselors moderated our Minecraft server. Rather than swooping in and solving problems that arose between players, counselors instead were trained to turn ownership of the resolution over to the kids. This encouraged players to see each other’s perspectives and generate their own solutions.

Counselors were taught ways of guiding this problem-solving process. For example, if a child’s proposed solution seems clearly inappropriate (‘I will hit him back’), rather than rejecting such a solution from a position of power, the counselor would either probe for an alternative solution (‘that is one option, what else could you do?’), guide the child to think through the consequences (‘how do you think he will react then?’), or ask the other child whether that would resolve the situation successfully from his/her perspective (‘would this solve the problem?’). This shift from a more authoritarian role to one of mediator or coach has been empowering for both kids and counselors. It enables all involved to spend their energy and time on developing possible solutions rather than fighting over ‘what happened’.

Peril or Potential

The underlying philosophy of this approach is that conflicts are a normal and inevitable part of daily life that cannot be eliminated. It is rather how conflicts are managed — not their presence as such — that determines if they are destructive or constructive. Learning to see conflict as an opportunity to be creative in its resolution leads kids to feel more optimistic and confident when conflict does arise. Rather than walking away from a problem they engage in ways that not only resolve the conflict but strengthen social bonds.

If we want to support kids in having lots of positive relationships in their lives, we have to acknowledge that it is crucial for children to have experiences of conflict. These experiences should take place in safe spaces where escalation does not lead to serious outcomes (e.g., physical violence), and where support is available for kids to try out constructive rather than destructive conflict resolution methods.

Preparing Kids for a Healthy Future

Kids live and breathe conflict. Helping them to develop productive ways of resolving conflict, including an ability to problem solve and actively listen, feel and show empathy for others, and create and maintain positive relationships can have powerful effects. Skills like self-esteem, self-efficacy, and sociability have been shown to matter across cultures. Children who develop these skills are more likely to graduate high school, and are better prepared to pursue college degrees and to become engaged citizens. Helping children to develop social and emotional skills is one of the most important things we can do to prepare them for a happy and healthy future.

We are continuing to explore SEL-rich moderation techniques at Connected Camps and feel energized by the feedback we are getting from our counselors and families about the benefits of the change in approach. While my kids are a few years away from joining the Connected Camps community, I am eager to take the lessons I am learning in doing this work and apply them at home!

**Thanks to Petr Slovak for his contribution to this project

Can Minecraft Help Raise A Generation of Good Gamers? was originally published in Connected Parenting on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Competitive gaming, or esports, is considered by many to be the next big thing. With a global viewership of 292 million people in 2016 and global revenues of over $463 million the sport looks set to dominate the hearts and minds of many. But can the sport do more than entertain the gaming masses? Can it also be leveraged as a platform for youth engagement and mentorship around STEM interests and social emotional learning?

Connected Camps recently partnered with the Samueli Foundation, researchers at UCI, and others to help launch the Orange County Esports League. The goal: allow high school students to pursue an interest in gaming and enhance their skills in leadership, teamwork, problem-solving, and communication. Organizers of the league chose League of Legends, a fast-paced game that pits two teams of powerful champions against one another across multiple battlefields and game modes, for play during the inaugural season.

From Counselor to Coach

Given the highly social nature of esports — players compete in teams, stream their play online for millions, and interact with their fans online and in person — the league was a natural extension of the Connected Camps approach. In our afterschool labs and summer camps kids work with online counselors who do many of the same things as a coach: support kids in leveling up their technical expertise in a topic they are passionate about while helping them navigate the social and emotional challenges of learning online with others. This type of informal mentorship can be transformative for kids, making them more resilient and better able to navigate college, career, and life.

The league launched in January 2018. Schools from all over Orange County fielded teams made up of students of every experience level, from novice to expert. We recruited and hired a group of League of Legend coaches who work with the teams online during the season, in afterschool practices, and during online clinics run in the evenings. Coaches come from universities around the country and hold academic interests in disciplines like mathematics, economics, computer science, and biology. All shared a deep passion for the game, experience working with youth, and credentials as top players of the game.

While their coaching work has much in common with traditional sports, there is one distinct difference. As Nickolas Landry, coaching lead for Connected Camps notes, “League of Legends is somewhat different from traditional sports because in order to become a coach, you have be a high ranking player. You essentially have to be a part of the 1% of the player base that manages to reach the rank of ‘Diamond’ or above, year after year. High Ranks often seem unattainable to players in Lower Ranks, but coaches are the living proof that any rank you want is attainable and that the road of self-improvement is never ending.”

Getting better at anything can be challenging, even when it is something you care about. Practice helps, but without support, encouragement, training, and challenge, practice alone is not enough. Coaches work closely with educators at each participating school to create an environment that values camaraderie, sportsmanship, and learning.

Takeaways

Research on video games indicates that under the right conditions, their play can be incredibly beneficial. Studies have shown video game play can improve visual acuity and attention, foster scientific reasoning, accelerate language learning, and increase problem-solving skills. Playing games with others can also lead to prosocial benefits, including improved communication, conflict resolution, and collaboration skills. An informal conversation with some of our coaches offered similar insights.

When asked about what he’s learned from coaching in the league this season, Ryan Lucich, a mathematics major and member of Texas Tech’s esports team, said “I think the best skill I have taken from this job would be professional communications. This ranges from working with the general managers who are teachers at the school, working with the players, and working with other coaches. It requires a lot of communication, which has always been a weakness for me and I didn’t have much experience with before. Another thing I have learned has been how to handle various situations within a team environment. Dealing with a disagreement between players or toxic situations is much different in a coaching role than a players role. I feel a lot more confident in my ability to handle those situations now more than when I first started coaching.”

Jake Carr, a coach with a background as former professional World of Warcraft player, felt he has grown in his professional abilities as well. “I’ve definitely learned a lot about communication and interpersonal skills, which I’m sure will carry over into whatever I do next. I’ve always been an introverted, quiet type, and I hate making decisions, telling people what to do, and giving presentations, so coaching a group of high school kids who actually look up to me and listen to what I have to say has been new, exciting, and a little nerve-wracking for me. I’m super grateful that the students at Samueli [Academy] are so, so easy to work with — no drama, no fighting, no unsportsmanlike behavior, etc. — because it let me focus on getting to know them and helping them get better at the game, rather than having to deal with any sort of petty interpersonal drama, which I doubt I would have handled particularly well.”

Well-Played

Early research on the league is pointing to value for both players and coaches, aligning with existing research on the potential benefits of participation in team sports. This includes higher GPAs for high school students, an increased satisfaction with school, and personal growth. When asked about his experience within the league as a coach, Calvin Gao, a freshman computer science major at UCI said he found coaching to be “…quite difficult since a lot of the high schoolers don’t seem interested in our conversations. I feel this is a large learning experience since I got to revisit how high schoolers behave and interact with their teachers and coaches through a gaming perspective outside of a classroom environment.”

The Orange County High School Esports league wraps up its inaugural season April 28 and the Samueli Foundation has plans to scale the league in the coming years. The work in unpredictable but as Drew Hansen, a recent biology grad and med school-hopeful said about his experience coaching in the league this season, “Sure, most of the time things do not go as planned. But if you are adaptive you can still make things work out well in the end.”

How An Esports League Is Changing Learning After School was originally published in Connected Parenting on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Like many parents, I struggle to strike a screen life balance. For better or worse, the portability of our digital life has disintegrated many of the boundaries that once cleanly separated the traditional social spheres. Today, we can work in our living rooms, and play at the office. We can connect with our geographically distant relatives, and ignore our geographically immediate family. A child’s phone is a distraction at school, but a learning tool at home. Teens socialize alone in their bedrooms, and feel isolated in a crowd. And what is abundantly clear, is that we’re spending a lot of time engrossed by our screens.

As parents, we’re in uncharted territory. The traditional chestnuts of child-rearing wisdom offer little direction, news and social media deliver conflicting advice, and expert recommendations are at odds with our lived reality. Is it OK for a 7-year-old to binge on Power Rangers on a sunny Saturday afternoon? Am I a terrible father for ignoring the tugs at my sleeve while I answer work emails? Will my toddler be permanently damaged because I let her use an iPad before she was two? Should I ban my tween from social media? So many questions, so much worry, so much guilt.

Fortunately, I found guidance and some consolation in Anya Kamenetz’s The Art of Screen Time: How Your Family Can Balance Digital Media and Real Life. Kamenetz, a veteran education writer and concerned parent, launches her book by asking: “How worried should we really be about kids and tech?” A big and complex question to be sure, but her highly readable account does a good job of untangling a complicated line of inquiry.

Kamenetz is a media savvy mom, but her tone is honest and exploratory rather than preachy or prescriptive. She never pretends to have all the answers, and her research is grounded in her personal struggle as a parent left to navigate the turbulent confluence of social, economic, and technological forces faced by so many families today. The central concern of The Art of Screen Time are the challenges digital media pose to family dynamics, but it also devotes a sizable parcel of real estate to examining technology in schools, and the emerging postscreen world of virtual reality (VR), artificial intelligence (AI), and the Internet of things (IoT).

Let’s face it: whether we like it or not, screens are now woven into the fabric of our lives and are not going away anytime soon, so we may as well learn to make the best of them. Kudos to the stoic holdouts who swim against the powerful currents of modern life, but that simply isn’t the reality for most families. Kamenetz encapsulates this ethos when she writes that “My takeaway from all this is that raising kids away from all screen media is impractical, if not impossible. And there’s no way to have perfect foresight about the impact of our choices. The best we can do as parents right now is share information, watch for danger signs, and rely on enduring values.” Even more: she believes that the judicious use of digital devices can actually do much good.

The early chapters of the book conduct a thorough and provocative review of research on digital media effects based on dozens of interviews with leading scholars, psychologists and scientists. It quickly becomes clear that many alarmist headlines and definitive pediatric recommendations are underpinned by some pretty patchy evidence. Studying kids on screens is a tricky business, largely hampered by the basic fact that we don’t want to harm children by testing them for harmful effects. What we’re left with are scattered findings that tend to be correlational rather than causal. In other words, much of the research that delves into media effects on children falls more on the side of speculation than proof.

Far from a screen time evangelist, Kamenetz is credible for her balanced approach. The potential hazards of digital media are never denied or minimized. On the contrary, the author validates many findings such as the negative effects of screens on sleep, obesity, aggression, and distracted driving. She forwards diverse views, lends her insights, and ultimately invites the reader to arrive at their own conclusions.

Kamenetz favors a philosophy of management and setting limits over outright prohibition. Parents are encouraged to maintain fluid channels of communication rather than turn to overly punitive or overbearing measures. A persistent message throughout the book is the importance of shared media — a fundamental principle of media literacy. When possible, parents should try to consume and dialogue about media with their kids. This allows us to better understand and frame our children’s media interactions, and it also helps kids learn to articulate and think critically about their media habitat. As one of the psychologists interviewed put it: “If you’re going to optimize learning, there’s no question that the best way to optimize is the be with your kid.”

The problem, of course, is time. Busy parents and working families don’t always have the luxury of sitting with their kids and patiently watching an episode of Doc McStuffins. This especially applies to low income and single parent families who sometimes juggle multiple jobs to make ends meet. What this, and many other issues addressed in the book, suggests is that the structure of our society may be a bigger culprit than the screens themselves.

It’s also important to remember that not all screen time is created equal. These luminescent windows connect kids to faraway family, provide support groups for new mothers, allow us to share family videos and pictures, teach us about the world, and let kids rehearse for a technological reality that will only become a bigger part of their lives in the years to come. It’s crucial for young people to leverage the benefits, and to become versed in protocols and safe practices early on to ensure a safer online life. Rather than enter the social media world cold and unprepared in their early teens, perhaps practicing with the family first will save them considerable trouble down the road.

The widespread compulsions of screen use have drawn comparisons to the ills of tobacco, but Kamenetz turns to food as a more suitable metaphor. Good food and a healthy diet improves our quality of life, while overindulging in junkier variants can lead to some well-documented problems. She also contends that people have diverse dispositions, lifestyles, and needs, and thus respond differently to screen stimulus, so there’s no single magic bullet recipe for ideal consumption. Instead, the book provides a balanced, birds-eye view of what we know, what we don’t know, and some compelling personal and real family experiences. The reader is oriented with a fairly detailed map and some useful pointers, but must ultimately plot a course that makes the most sense for them.

The Art of Screen Time will not completely absolve you of screen-related guilts and worries, but you will be much better informed to make decisions that are a good fit for you and your family which, at this point in the real world of near ubiquitous devices, is the most that we can ask for.

Parenting in the Digital Age: A Review of The Art of Screen Time was originally published in Connected Parenting on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

While some parents worry that their kids’ online life is a poor substitute for real world interactions, the reverse may be true for some children with autism.

A growing body of evidence suggests that socializing online may help kids with autism scaffold towards better real world interactions. One 2016 study reports that, “online communities, including social networking sites, can create multiple avenues for communication for…those with autism. Evidence indicates that contrary to what we may believe instinctively, these online activities can actually improve and enhance offline behaviors.”

These are promising findings, but how do social skills learned and practiced in digital realms translate to better interpersonal interactions?

Katie Bowman’s experience with her 12-year-old son, Shaori, offers a compelling case study about how participation in an online community can have a transformative effect on the social life of a child with autism.

The Last Resort

“Diagnosed with Aspergers (a type of high functioning autism) at three, Shaori has the classic social difficulties that mark the condition,” said Bowman. Although kids on the spectrum want to be social, they struggle with some aspects of interpersonal communication, such as having difficulty initiating social encounters, detecting irony or nuance, processing non-verbal cues, exhibiting emotional reciprocity, and they can have a tendency to fixate on a single topic.

“Shaori had always been so silent and locked away socially. Even back in pre-K, one of the other children had turned around and said ‘Wow, he actually can speak’ after a rare conversational moment. As parents, that broke our hearts, especially knowing the joyful firecracker he was at home,” said Bowman. At summer camp, Shaori similarly struggled to make connections and foster friendships, which led to sporadic attendance.

“We felt that online camps were a last resort, something that would at least ensure he talked to other children over the summer, even if he didn’t actually leave the house,” said Bowman. They chose Connected Camps because of the Minecraft and Scratch programs, which played into Shaori’s interests. Little did the Bowmans suspect that their “last resort” would mark a turning point in Shaori’s young life.

“We could hear laughter coming from him at the computer. He exhibited a desire to be “on time” and get his chores completed so he could be early,” said Bowman. “We could hear stilted interactions, often in the form of direct commands, which we suggested he soften. We could hear him greeting his fellow campers, and he started to chuckle and tell stories to us outside of camp. He seemed happy in this space, almost like he was as a younger child, before the anxieties of school set in.”

Because Shaori was on his computer at home, the Bowmans could discreetly coach their son with tips on etiquette and protocol in a way that would seem unnatural or invasive in a physical group setting.

Growing Confidence

As his mentor, Luke Lohden guided Shaori through various camp projects, including coding, game design, and engineering, and watched him develop as he became more invested in the community.

“Since I met Shaori, I’ve watched a confidence grow in him that’s been awesome to behold,” said Lohden. “At the start, he was timid to get engaged with the program and with the other kids. He preferred to work on his own at the start, but after finding his passion for creating these stories, I saw his confidence grow alongside his skill in coding. He loved both sharing his work and seeing the work of his peers. He will regularly comment on others’ work, giving meaningful encouragement and thoughtful critique.”

“I’ve been touched to see the generosity Shaori is developing in helping the other people in the program,” adds Bowman.

Kids with autism can fall into a cycle where awkward social encounters can erode their confidence, and the attendant discomfort can cause them to avoid further social situations. As interpersonal contact becomes more limited, the lack of practice can further inhibit social skill development.

Online channels of communication reduce many of the complexities of nonverbal communication that can be confusing and distracting for someone on the spectrum. Text-based conversations are paced and leave a permanent record, which allow people on the spectrum to better focus on the message and allow time to devise corresponding response strategies. Successful communication can spark an upward cycle that increases confidence and leads to further success which, in turn, builds more confidence.

During this time, Shaori became much more conversant with his classmates, a welcome change that Bowman attributes to the growth of his social confidence at camp. A suitable online community can be a safe and structured place to rehearse social protocols that can later be performed more confidently in the less orderly outside world.

Learning the Script

Routine conversations are peppered with scripted phrases like wishing somebody a good morning or asking “how was your weekend?” which contribute to a sense of mutual ease. But a child with autism may not see the value of these seemingly frivolous transactions.

“People on the spectrum don’t understand the purpose of social lubricants; what are the benefits of such interactions if you truly do not care what someone does on the weekend?” said Bowman. “In Shaori’s black and white world, he construed of these as ‘fake’, even when explained to him that it’s a script to make things run more smoothly.”

Despite his initial resistance, Shaori eventually started to apply the social script and addressed the other campers with greetings and small talk. His parents were thrilled to see this new habit also scaffold to school, where they watched him salute his classmates during car drop-offs and pick-ups, and the happy recounting of real life interactive school stories are now commonplace at the dinner table.

“Perhaps the daily repetition of these scripts with multiple online folks, modelled at Connected Camps, locked them into his brain as convention. Perhaps he thought that since this was an appropriate pattern with his friends at Connected Camps, it was an appropriate pattern for his interactions with friends at school. Either way, we’re happy to see him feel part of a larger group in real life, as well as within Connected Camps.”

Bowman’s observations align with the views of the UCI researchers, who write that the digital environment “lays the basic foundation for practicing and honing a wide variety of social skills to be used in a wide variety of environments, a good first (not final) step towards enhanced social experiences.”

Giving Back

Shaori’s improved social skills and growing confidence encouraged him to assume more responsibility within the community.

“Initially I was nervous, as I didn’t know people in Connected Camps but they helped me settle in,” said Shaori. “They’ve been great about answering questions when I’ve had them. I feel very grateful to them. Once I became a community helper I started doing the same with new players and spreading the knowledge.”

Shaori was keen to give back, and he approached his parents about formally applying for a junior volunteer position at Connected Camps.

“When I asked him why he would want to do this, he said ‘I want to give back to Connected Camps; it’s brought me so much happiness and done so much for me,’” said Bowman. ”We submitted his app two days ago, and yesterday they invited him into the counsellor lounge to discuss the junior volunteer role. He is very gratefully taking on this new responsibility. It is wonderful to see him succeed in this particular area and become a champion for something he is passionate about.”

Besides honing his day-to-day social skills, Shaori has come to understand and enact citizenship, responsibility, leadership, reciprocity and empathy, all of which speak to a healthy and productive engagement with his community. “The sense of not being on his own has surpassed the social and showed him the possibilities of working within a team to achieve an end goal,’ said Bowman.

Autism is manifest in diverse ways, and not all assistive interventions will produce uniform results with all kids. Shaori’s story is certainly encouraging, but it’s important to remember that he found a community that nourished his specific interests, and that he enjoys the support of involved parents and a good school. There are no magic bullets, and much more research is needed, but this case indicates that, for some children on the spectrum, online communities can reduce the pressures of social transactions, and even lead to the deeper fulfillment produced by a sense of belonging.

Can Online Communities Improve Social Skills and Grow Confidence for Kids with Autism? was originally published in Connected Parenting on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.