By Michael Ganci, Local Media Editor, Syntax, for The Bronxville School

Apr. 20, 2016:  Bronxville Middle School students in Greg Di Stefano's technology class have been working together to design their own board games. 

The innovative project, which spanned several weeks, allowed the students to be creative as they invented new games and rules and created prototypes using a 3-D printer and a wood-carving machine.

The process began with students playing traditional games in class. They were then asked to make one new rule for their favorite board game, and then they were asked to create all new rules before taking the leap to incorporate their own ideas into a brand-new game that someone else might enjoy playing. 

The students designed each aspect of the game on a computer and made paper prototypes of those original games to exercise their ideas before they committed to finalizing them. 

"One of the big driving forces behind this kind of project is that they have to use a computer and automated machinery in order to realize their ideas, so we're not just making pretty pictures on a computer, we're making something that would come to real life," Di Stefano said. "Student voice is a really big aspect of this."

One group collaborated on reinventing Connect Four by adding a third player who can make alliances and sabotage the game. Another group rediscovered the 1990s as they created a New York City subway map-themed game around the show Friends. Bronxville Middle School eighth-graders Molly Denning, Caitlin Mooney, and Sasha Paradise, who created the Friends board game, said that the rules require their characters to take the subway and overcome different obstacles, such as a delayed train or a lost MetroCard, in order to get to the Central Park café first. 

"We made everything," Mooney said. "We made the board, the cards, and the rules, and that was probably my favorite part, because with other board games you don't have that much freedom." 

Paradise said she enjoyed the creative process and thought that it was rewarding to see their idea come to life. "We printed our game pieces on a 3-D printer, and it's really cool the way they turned out," she said. "They look like ordinary game pieces, except they're made out of plastic and we made them ourselves."

Di Stefano said the project encourages students to think in different ways. Besides acting as designers, they had to also be cognizant of the end user and make sure whoever plays their game would have a good experience. Throughout the process, he said, they made discoveries along the way and learned how to overcome challenges.

"You give the same project to every single student and I won't get two identical results back, which makes it pretty challenging, especially for me, but it also makes it a highly rewarding situation," he said.

By the end of the school year, all middle school students will have designed a board game and taken home a copy. The challenging project encourages students to make discoveries on their own, think critically, and collaborate with classmates, which are skills closely aligned with the dispositions of the Bronxville Promise.

To watch a video of students creating their own board games, go to http://www.bronxvilleschool.org/about/news/middle-school-students-design-original-board-games-watch-video/.

Pictured here:  Bronxville Middle School technology teacher Greg Di Stefano helps a student use a wood-carving machine to create a board game.

Photos courtesy The Bronxville School