Hey,

Remember me? It’s been a while, huh? Life has made it difficult to find the time and motivation to write. I started a new job. Had my second son. Both are awesome. Honestly, Covid made it hard to innovate and try new things in the classroom, so I didn’t have much to write about. I’ve been in survival mode until recently. But, mostly, Garden State Esports (GSE) has consumed my free time.

During Covid, I started a scholastic esports league so my students would have a way to stay connected and socialize. What started out as inviting teacher-friends who had video game clubs to play against other schools in Rocket League has turned into one of the nation’s biggest scholastic esports leagues. As of this morning,  I have 170 school districts in my league, which is almost a third of the districts in NJ. It has been an amazing ride starting the league, turning it into a nonprofit, and recruting other passionate educators from around the state to help out, all in the name of helping kids grow socially, emotionally, and academically through esports.

Here’s the thing about scholastic esports, though, and maybe why my league is doing so well: it’s not about competitive gaming. Gaming is just a way to teach kids what we want them to know using something that they love.

One of the best parts about bringing an esports team to your school are all the Career and Technical Education (CTE) benefits that go along with it! GSE encourages schools to create the “team behind the team.” This suppor team fill all the important roles and do the neccessary jobs to make our esports team function. For example, I have a team journalist, statistician, IT experts, project managers, business developers, and more. These students’ on ‘the team behind the team’ are getting hands-on experiences with in-demand, mostly stem-based, jobs in one of the fastest growing industry in the world.

One of the ‘and more’ positions on my team is the shoutcasting team. A shoutcaster is the broadcaster of the esports world. Shoutcasters call the action, provide color commentary, and otherwise engage the audience during an esports competition just like a broadcaster does during a traditional sports broadcast during in-person and live streamed events.

Behind the scenes, a team of kids support the shoutcaster. They use software to add overlays, graphics, videos, and other assets live to the stream to improve the overall viewing experience. They also transition between scenes and make sure the broadcast looks and sounds good. Members of the team monitor the chat, answering questions and making sure everyone is being respectful. The team statitician is also turns numbers into meaningful factoids for the shoutcasters to deliver. If something goes wrong, it’s all hands on deck until it’s solved.

Now, I’m very lucky. My district believes in what I’m doing. They have made an investment in STEM (which is an investment in esports) and have gone all out to empower me to have the best STEM program possible. I know that not everyone is a lucky as I am. And if you’re familiar with blog, you know I’m always thinking about ways to recreate meaningful education systems for as close to free as possible. I think I’ve done that for teacher’s interested in bringing a multi-cam, relatively sophisticated, broadcasting program.

You will need:

• A moderatley powerful windows-based computer
• Chromebooks, phones, iPads, webcam, or other devices that have both a camera and can connect to the internet.
• OBS – Free and open source software for video recording and live streaming
• VDO.Ninja – free, browser-based software that turns any device with a camera and internet connection into a live cam or screen share that can be sent to OBS.
• Canva (with free educator account)
• A place to broadcast to (Twitch, Youtube, etc.)

The basic workflow is this:

Install OBS on a moderatley powerful PC with a dedicated graphics card. OBS is your virtual broadcasting studio. Once you have OBS installed and setup (there are a ton of guides out there to get you up and running quickly and easily) you can use Vdo.ninja to turn anything with a camera and internet into a live cam.

Using the ‘add your camera to OBS feature on Vdo.ninja’, you can create a link that will send whatever you are recording with the camera to OBS which can then be shown live on your stream. Protip: ask parents and other members of your community to donate their generation-old phones. Phones without a carrier can still be connected to wifi and work great on a little tri-pod to create an on-the-go live cam for your studio. Since the whole system is wireless, you can either move the camera anywhere and/or you can use as many cameras with vdo.ninja as you want, we often ‘throw it’ to shoutcasters who are at our game-analysis desk, doing sideline interviews, or getting crowd-reaction shots. You can even plug a mic or lavaleer into the Chromeboo, phone, or ipad if you have one, but I’ve found the onboard mic is usally good enough for what we’re doing.

If you need to, you can also use vdo.ninja’s ‘remote screen share’ to screenshare gameplay into OBS as well. From there, the shoutcasters can call the action based on what they see shared with them.

You can even make things look professional! Canva, if you didn’t know, is a wonderful graphic design program that is free to use for educators. A little known fact is that Canva has been adding a ton of great features that make it perfect for creating amazing looking stingers, logos, scene transitions, overlays, and on screen graphics perfect for broadcasting. Not only do my kids and I use this in our esports program, but Garden State Esports is basically powered by Canva. If you do a search for Twitch templates or esports templates in Canva you will get all kinds of pre-made graphics and videos that can be easily editied and exported into OBS that help take your broadcast to the next level.

Finally, using industry concepts like this run-of-show spreadsheet I created so I didn’t have to buy expensive software, you can have kids pace-out and plan the broadcast. Market and invite the community to watch your event live or online via Twitch and you’re ready to go live!

This guide is super short and simple because I could spend all day walking you through different tweaks, plug-ins, etc. but there is so much to learn and so many good tutorials and resources out there, I’d be wasting your time. I am also still learning the best way to run something like this in a school setting, so if you have any thoughts or tips, please share them.

Finally, some schools might not even have access to a computer with a dedicated graphics card, so do know there are other options like Stream Yard that make it even easier to get started, though I would argue learning software like OBS is part of the education value.

The broadcasting system I’ve described here would work for something like a student-news program or classroom “show” as well which is always a fun way to have students show what they’ve learned. Don’t forget, with OBS you don’t have to go live. You produce an entire show while it saves it to your hardrive that you can later edit and push to YouTube.

Give it a try! I didn’t even get into the social-emotional benefits, connections to literacy, math, and other subjects, as well as all the digital citizenship you can teach through broadcasting, but you’ll see that for yourself if you give it a try!

I can’t promise I’ll be posting reguarly, but I do promise not to let a year go by before my next post. If this or anything I’ve written has been helpful, please consider following Garden State Esports. Leveraging the size of our audience to get donations will help me keep GSE free for everyone!

Until then,

GLHF

Eric Churus, head coach of the Burnet Barbarians from Burnet Middle School in Union (whose middle school team won the GSE Rocket League state championship AND beat the high school state champs last year) shared with us his vision for “varsity letters” at the middle school level. Here’s Eric:

In the 2020-2021 school year we as a collective society faced a difficult challenge overhauling the educational process of our students.  I and many others faced a second challenge, starting up esports programs at our school.  I was tapped to start this program by my building principal and IT director the previous year, right before the world turned upside down.  The summer of 2020 was challenging as I planned out how to create this program from the ground up and give it meaning to those involved.

When the season came around I found myself with a core group of 13 players with a wide range of talent.  We quickly found ourselves finding great success and were assisted in the purchase of jerseys for the players by our Union.  As I went through the design process I thought that this could be the answer to a problem I’ve been trying to solve for some time: How do I recognize the highly talented players on my team who were going to participate in a selective competition?

As a middle school, varsity letters are not something that I can present, as there is no varsity competition at this level.  I decided to go with “Varsity Jerseys,” jerseys that students would be able to earn through their participation in our program.  I had a blast designing our first of these unique shirts for some players on our Rocket League team.

When the year started to wind down I began the planning stages for our new season. In doing this I realized that I missed providing a meaningful award to a student who did more work behind the scenes of our program than many did in front, honestly they probably did more than me as well.  This student reworked our Twitch, Discord, social media, and much more.  A certificate would not suffice for this student.  I then remembered my high school days on the track team and how team managers who actively participated, assisted, and stayed on for multiple years were also given letters by the coach and came to my ah-ha moment.  I went and then designed a unique jersey for that student and more for other roles that we anticipated incorporating into this year’s program.  The idea being that all students who make major contributions to this program through their hard work should be acknowledged for it.

The goal of this program is to try and emulate a professional team with students participating in various roles so they can gain hands on experience with jobs in the esports ecosystem.  Those behind the scenes roles are highly critical to our future success and denying them a meaningful reward for their dedication would not sit well with me.  This becomes a way to not only reward them for their hard work but fully establish that they are important members of the team worthy of a jersey unique to them.

My friend Ivan Kaltman is back again to share the amazing work he has been doing around game-based learning and the success he’s having with his new video game for struggling readers called The Majesti!

One of the most prominent trends in education today is inclusion, yet students
are often pulled from their regular classrooms for ELA instruction because they
are unable to fluently read and comprehend grade-leveled texts. Digital games
can provide supports that enable these students to read aloud together with their
mainstream peers without sacrificing the challenging text needed to engage
stronger readers.

We piloted The Majesti in a fifth-grade class one period each week for about
half the year. Students who were usually pulled for ELA instruction were included.
The Majesti is a true game (available on Steam) developed for a higher purpose:
an instructional material that enables all fifth-grade students to comprehend and
read aloud fluently.

The Majesti was one of twelve games selected by Serious Play Conference 2021
to be presented at their Learning Game Showcase on June 26th . Along with a
demo of the game and explaining the supports, I shared student feedback, a
crucial (yet often neglected) assessment of instructional materials. All students–
regardless of reading level–said they liked the Majesti more than other books
they read in class this year. Reasons included the expected (“it’s a video game,
battles, you get to move the characters, explore, choices”, etc.) but supports were
also listed (“the text is split-up, sentences instead of long paragraphs, we get to
know what the hard words meant”, etc.).

The class had an eight level Fountas and Pinnell range, from M-T. All students
were able to read aloud together due to the supports. Two of the most important
supports were visual presentation of text, and by the text itself being
differentiated instead of leveled (students were matched with character text at
their reading level).

Our more reluctant readers all volunteered to read each time because they
knew exactly when they were supposed to read (there is always a picture of the
character next to the text), and the text was easier to visually perceive and track
(than paragraphs in regular books). Though these students did not read the more
challenging text aloud, they were able to follow along while their advanced peers
read. This enabled them to comprehend the more advanced text and robust
vocabulary.

Another area of inclusiveness involved the main characters themselves: since
they’re animals, all students were able to role-play and identify with them
equally, regardless of race or gender.

Though The Majesti will be available commercially on Steam, digital copies via
Steam keys will be given freely to any educator who wishes to check it out and/or
use with their students. Just mention Teched up Teacher!