I am pleased to announce Kingade, a project I created and managed during 2011 that uses game development to teach kids about environment care. Kingade took place in southern Brazil and it was created inside Federal University of Fronteira Sul, where I am a Computer Science professor.

The project was born as an idea to share the university knowledge with its nearby community. Using the technology of Computer Science course, the teaching skills of Pedagogy course and the drawings made by kids of public schools, we could produce educational materials to teach about environment care. The plan we executed was the following:

• Pedagogy students created small workshops focusing on subjects related to environment care, such as saving water, don’t waste food, etc. The students were mentored by Pedagogy professors.
• The workshops were applied to kids from public schools. During the workshops the kids watched videos and discussed about the main topic of every workshop.
• In the end of each workshop, the kids were asked to write and draw about it. We told them all the drawings would be used to create a computer game.
• After we transformed all the drawings and some texts from the workshops into game assets. Those assets were delivered to Computer Science students. They used those assets and the Flash platform to create an educational game.
• The result of this project was a computer game made by students and kids that can be freely used by anyone to teach about environment care.

Read more about the project and see the kids final game at kingade.com.