About 1,000 middle and high school students in Los Angeles are expected to design video games this school year that expose players to the importance of kindness, wildlife conservation or news literacy.

The best student gamemakers could earn scholarships and other prizes. It’s all part of one of the first initiatives from the Annenberg Foundation that ropes in the Los Angeles tech community.

With the gaming effort, it recruited Riot Games, the Los Angeles company behind the hit computer game “League of Legends,” to host participants on upcoming field trips.

Twenty-two teachers spread across subjects from social studies to computer science — half of them women — received training last week on designing video games and tools to produce them. The teachers applied for the opportunity, certifying that their schools had computers powerful enough to operate gamemaking software provided by organizers.

Read the article in full at latimes.com.