Wednesday entailed a visit to the National ESports Centre in snowy Sunderland for a group of Year 9 girls.
Once they had made their frozen way to the Centre, the girls took advantage of being the first school to arrive to use the consoles to show their skills.
When everyone else was onsite they spent some time researching the roles that are associated with esports – and there are a LOT! With females and non-binary people as half of the population, holding only about a third of the jobs in the esports sector, there was a lot to explore.
After their research, they hit the computers. A LOT of ‘wow’ responses indicated our girls felt that they had died and gone to heaven – a room of full spec gaming computers just for the participants!
They used an online resource to create their own virtual worlds. This was so intuitive and engaging everyone produced something awesome in a very little time. Then they coded actions for the characters in the games they had begun. This section of the day was over far too quickly!
Lunch was in the original space, and everyone fuelled up for the tournament to follow. As they had to leave early to return for school buses, our group went first. Back in the awesome gaming room for Rocket League – Teams A and D won the first matches far too easily, and their wins again in the second matches were proof that some seriously sharp skills and quick learning were important as the competition became hotter (which was handy since they had a cold walk back to the bus!)
Back to William Howard with lots of ideas about how to develop these experiences to include more of our students – and a promise of a rematch in the New Year.
The girls were presented with certificates of participation during assembly on Friday.
