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Salmon Culture Meets Game Programming

Go here to see the work of this wonderful group of students.

Go here to see the work of this wonderful group of students.

Fall off a rock and maybe you’ll be lucky enough to be rescued by the salmon people!  It’s really fun when it’s one of the many video games developed by a group of youth in the Gen7 program. Fifteen Native American youth learned about native culture and salmon through storytellers, a look at art and images of Native culture from area tribes, and a visit to the Muckleshoot tribal salmon hatchery. They then learned how to do game programming using the MIT Scratch program and use designs and themes from salmon culture and apply it to their games.  So falling off a rock and getting saved by salmon or navigating a river becomes a great experience in design and computer programming. And fun! Congratulations to the 15 students in the class and thanks to Tierra Madre Fund, which works to  build leadership and support innovative projects that honor and maintain Traditional Knowledge, along with technology trainers from SDK Bridge, Yesler Community Center computer lab and the volunteers who expanded the world for the students…and maybe hatched a few new designers and programmers. This project received funding from our Technology Matching Fund program.