Students Level Up at Skoolcade, Kern’s First-Ever Student Video Game Design Competition

More than 100 students, judges, parents, and teachers packed the new Kern County Superintendent of Schools (KCSOS) STEAM Yard Thursday afternoon to watch elementary and middle school students go head-to-head in the inaugural Kern Codes Skoolcade: the competition to see who can design the best video game.

Justin Janssen,​​​​ STEM program specialist with KCSOS, helped organize the competition and judged the students’ games. He was thrilled with the amount of kids who signed up.

“This, being our first year doing this, I was expecting maybe four or five schools competing,” Janssen explained. “We’ve had close to 75 students create well over 50 games in our very first year.”

First created by the Ventura County Office of Education and shared with Kern County, the Skoolcade competition is designed to test students’ coding skills and creativity. Students in grades fourth through eighth can compete as a team or individually, submitting a video game that the judges then play and score based on criteria such as creativity, ease of play, player enjoyment, graphic design, and more. Students also walked the judges through their creative process and answered their questions.

“They developed the game, they designed it, they decided what they want the game to accomplish. The whole thing they’ve done from scratch,” Janssen said. “They’re super excited because this is what they have put their sweat and tears into. Now they get to show off with other kids.”

Elizabeth Mayfield, fourth and fifth grade teacher from Ramon Garza Elementary (Bakersfield City School District), brought her whole coding class comprised of 38 students. She taught the basics of coding for the past two months and then set the class free to work on their own games.

“Seeing the change from the beginning when we introduced coding, they were very intimidated. Now they’re going home and spending hours creating,” Mayfield explained. “They’ve been doing a spectacular job. We couldn’t be more proud of them.”

You can learn more about Skoolcade and play through all of the games here.

Results

Group Winners

1st Place – Mario Guy – Carlos Flores, Ezekiel Bolanos – Ramon Garza Elementary
2nd Place – ULTRAKILL – Jerod Gilet, Brendon Porter, Aidyn Ayers – Fruitvale Jr. High
3rd Place – In the Middle of Nowhere – Jonathon Kott, Issac Gallardo, Max Maddern – Fruitvale Jr. High

Individual Winners

1st Place – Jumpy Chicken – Tarun Thallapalle – St. John’s Lutheran
2nd Place – Baseball Game – Efrain Ramirez Cano – Ramon Garza Elementary
3rd Place – FETCH – Citlalli Arriaga – Ramon Garza Elementary