JamToday - The European Game Jam Learning HUB

Jamtoday, aims to establish a central networking hub for the sustainable implementation and uptake of the next generation of educational games across Europe. In recent years, the Game Jam approach has been increasingly effective in bringing together the appropriate stakeholders around broad themes and challenges, though this has become rather fragmented. There is now a need to focus on establishing a sustainable learning hub for raising awareness of educational games and their use within learning environments. By bringing together key organisations from several perspectives, Jamtoday seeks to achieve this goal. Game Jams have been organised for several years around the world and are perceived as a powerful instrument to stimulate innovation in the creation, development and deployment of educational games. Game Jams have been instrumental in stimulating innovation in the creation, implementation and deployment of educational games. Jamtoday will support this by creating toolkits and providing support for events across Europe, at local, regional and national levels. Given the emerging focus on new learning environments, Jamtoday will also support the move towards games as contextual interventions and foster awareness-raising and innovation between the games and learning sectors with the intention of demonstrating real-life impact. The Jamtoday hub will thus provide stewardship (that is, structure, guidance, tools and support) for this emerging area and ensure that stakeholders maintain a balanced understanding of the main issues, and the implementation hurdles that need to be overcome. Considered within the wider context of the Creative Classroom, Jamtoday seeks to provide a replicable model of good practice in the design of transformative environments and to provide methods and tools that have been validated from several perspectives.