Saturday August 8th

Main Stage

9:30am Welcome

10:00am - 11:00am Ed Fleming and Videogame.net

11:00am - 12:00pm Speakers

12:00pm - 1:00pm Break

1:00pm - 2:00pm The Science of CLOCK STRIKER

2:00pm - 3:00pm Speakers

3:00pm - 4:00pm Toiya Kristen Finley

“Don't limit your ideas or what you can do. You never know what kind of opportunities will come to you. I always wanted to be a storyteller growing up, but I had no idea what kind of stories I would be creating now.”

4:00pm - 5:00pm BLACK IN GAMING: Saturday BATTLE MANGA and black-led videogames

6:00pm -7:00pm Heather Chirtea

"The future doesn't belong to the cautious, it belongs to anyone courageous enough to build it."

Esports Tournament Final

7:00pm - 9:00pm Defending Durham Community Fundraiser Final

EPIC Games Learning Lab

9:00am - 3:00pm‍ ‍Builder Mode: Learning Inside the Simulation

We keep talking about preparing students for the future, but if you spend time with them, you see something different. They are already building inside it.

Across platforms like Minecraft, Roblox, and Fortnite, alongside AI-supported tools, students are designing worlds, solving problems, collaborating, and creating systems that look a lot more like real work than most classroom assignments. These spaces are often dismissed as distractions, yet they function as environments where learning happens through iteration, experimentation, and ownership.

This session explores what changes when we stop treating learning as something delivered and start designing for participation. Drawing from real implementations through Metaversal Learning and VideoGame.Net, I’ll share what we’ve seen work, where it breaks, and how learners respond when they are given the opportunity to build inside systems they care about.

This is not a new tool or a passing trend. It is a shift in where and how learning takes place. The question is not whether it’s happening. It’s who is willing to design for it.