Susan Maynor's Creative Quest

For our recent playtest with ReBoot: A Computational Thinking Quest , I had the opportunity to observe a second-year teacher, Emma, as she played through our prototype. Emma teaches elementary students and is right in the thick of designing lessons, solving classroom challenges, and growing in confidence with instructional strategies, making her a perfect fit for testing our game. Since ReBoot is designed to help pre-service and early-career teachers learn and practice computational thinking in a supportive, narrative-based environment, her perspective was exactly what we needed. We conducted the playtest synchronously, as I work with Emma. She played the game while I observed her clicks, pacing, and decision-making, then followed up with a structured reflection. The entire session lasted about 30 minutes, including playtime and debrief. Our focus during this playtest session was on instructional clarity, core mechanic usability, narrative engagement, and emotional experience — all t...

Design Process and Reflection:  Over the past six weeks, I've had the opportunity to collaborate with a team to design a game-based simulation that introduces pre-service teachers to computational thinking (CT) and helps them learn how to integrate CT strategies into different content areas. While the final product is still evolving, the process has challenged and grown me—as a designer, an educator, and a teammate. Our team launch was tentative. We shared our expertise and passions, but the process leaned heavily toward task delegation rather than collaboration. I found myself jumping in more than I anticipated or wanted—not to take over, but to jumpstart our thinking and generate forward momentum. As a coach, I know that sometimes you must show before you tell. After initial game ideas and client communication, I created a hybrid game concept document that synthesized multiple team ideas and addressed our client's goals: helping future teachers understand computational thinki...