Basketball champion and global icon LeBron James teams up with timeless Tune Bugs Bunny in the animated/live-action event Space Jam: A New Legacy, coming 2021. LeBron must lead the Looney Tunes to victory over a rogue A.I.’s digitized basketball stars in a high-stakes challenge of Tunes vs. Goons.
Microsoft and Space Jam: A New Legacy are coming together for an epic partnership in the leadup to the film’s release. In celebration of the new movie, Xbox, Bugs Bunny and LeBron James are teaming up to help YOU create an original arcade-style video game inspired by the new movie.
In partnership with the film, Microsoft Store is creating a free coding workshop for kids of all ages designed to introduce them to the elements of coding, career options in the STEAM field, and how to code their own video game. In the movie, LeBron’s son Dom dreams of being a video game developer, and workshop attendees will get hands-on experience learning some of those skills. They can use what they’ve learned to enter a contest and submit their idea for the Space Jam: A New Legacy arcade-style video game, exclusively for Xbox Game Pass.
The workshop has the goal of making coding more accessible to everyone, but especially those students in underserved communities. A high percentage of minorities drop out of opportunities to learn to code due to a combination of a lack of access and understanding of how coding works.
It’s estimated that in the next decade 77 percent of jobs will be in technology, while creativity is ranked among the top three skills the World Economic Forum predicts employers will be looking for in candidates. These workshops present an opportunity to help prepare kids today for the digital future, while also inspiring their creativity and boosting their confidence by utilizing heroes that are familiar to them.
In the Microsoft Store virtual workshop, Store associates will lead participants through a 90-minute lesson plan that touches on the history of video games, the elements that make up a video game and the people who do those jobs, and how to brainstorm a video game idea using PowerPoint.
Participants will then explore Microsoft’s MakeCode Arcade, which teaches block coding basics. The Space Jam: A New Legacy-themed tutorial will give them an opportunity to learn the mechanics of building a video game.
Kids will learn to code a game in which a character chases a basketball around the court and every time they get it, it’s randomly placed somewhere else, with a timer that runs wherever the object is placed. While it may be a generic game concept, it teaches good fundamentals.
A similar, teacher-led, workshop also will be made available for educators across the globe, giving them the opportunity to provide hands-on STEAM training to their students.
Travis Walter
Travis is a Vice President for Microsoft Store. He is leading the next chapter in the organization’s digital transformation journey, including the redeployment of the diverse and talented team of associates. He lives in Seattle with his wife and three children and currently serves on the Board of Directors of Building Changes, a non-profit committed to ending homelessness in Washington.
