New Ohio Collaborative to Support Esports in High Schools

  • By Dian Schaffhauser
  • 04/07/20

Two Ohio organizations are working with the North America Scholastic Esports Federation (NASEF) and the Samueli Foundation to form the Ohio Scholastic Esports League Collaborative. The goal: to give students access to NASEF's scholastic esports platform, provide competitive opportunities for student teams and provide a framework for high schools to create esports career pathways. Those involved include the PAST Foundation, a nonprofit that develops problem-based learning opportunities for K-12, and Esports Ohio, a nonprofit with 150 member schools, created by teachers to help high schools set up esports teams and clubs.

Organizers said the new program would give students a community of peers with similar interests in a supervised setting, where they'll develop skills in communication, collaboration and problem solving. While esports often begins with expert players, Collaborative officials noted, teams "quickly realize they need other team members to assist with marketing, promotion, sponsorships, video and production and programming."

"NASEF is having great success developing local affiliates like this one in Ohio," said Gerald Solomon, founder of NASEF and executive director of the Samueli Foundation, in a statement. "Students love playing with local rival schools in addition to national competitions, and educators appreciate the opportunity to work with local counterparts as they implement a new idea like scholastic esports."

About the Author

Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • DreamBox Math

    Discovery Education Announces Accessibility Enhancements for DreamBox Math

    Discovery Education has updated DreamBox Math, an online math program for K–8 students to supplement core instruction, to improve accessibility for K–5 students, according to a news release. DreamBox Math provides personalized instruction by adapting to individual learners’ responses and providing an engaging, dynamic learning environment.

  • laptop and fish hook

    Security Researchers Identify Generative AI 'Vishing' Attack

    A new report from researchers at Ontinue's Cyber Defense Center has identified a complex, multi-stage cyber attack that leveraged social engineering, remote access tools, and signed binaries to infiltrate and persist within a target network.

  • interconnected geometric human figures forming a network

    CoSN: School Staffing Is the Top Hurdle to K-12 Innovation

    Hiring and keeping educators and IT staff remains the top challenge for K-12 education in 2025, according to the latest Driving K-12 Innovation Report from the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN).

  • glowing AI text box emerges from a keyboard on a desk, surrounded by floating padlocks, warning icons, and fragmented shields

    1 in 10 AI Prompts Could Expose Sensitive Data

    A recent study from data protection startup Harmonic Security found that nearly one in 10 prompts used by business users when interacting with generative AI tools may inadvertently disclose sensitive data.